Science, Scripture, and the Church: The Search for Genuine Authority (Part I)

I began writing this blog post and realized it was turning into a lengthy essay, so I've decided to post it in two parts. Broadly stated, this is the story of my search for truth and for trustworthy sources of authority.  I will get around to tying it in to my developing view of various sources of authority

I was home schooled in a protestant evangelical Christian family. I grew up believing that science basically proves God's existence and the historical accuracy of the creation and flood stories in Genesis. I believed that the earth was created in six literal days, that no new species had evolved since the creation of the world, that the entire universe (or at least the earth, anyway) was somewhere between 6,000-10,000 years old, and that the vast majority of the fossil record and geological phenomena like the Grand Canyon could be accounted for by Noah's flood. I had arguments and books to back it up. I even had a book dedicated to explaining how we are able to see light from stars that are billions of light years away while the earth itself is only 6,000 years old. And it wasn't the usual cop-out solution that God had created a “mature universe” complete with pre-installed beams of light. This book made use of the possibility of white holes and their time dilating effects. I was convinced. Furthermore, I believed that people who did not accept these conclusions were being intellectually dishonest and misrepresenting the evidence. On top of that, I believed that most “evolutionists” had an agenda to undermine the Christian faith. In other words, I was a disciple of young earth creationism.

In my middle school and high school years, my scientific beliefs were closely tied to my belief in God. I had no doubt that science was trustworthy and I had no doubt that science supported my belief in Christianity. It worked like this in my head: I knew that I could trust science to give me truth; I also knew that science (when studied by honest individuals) supported the belief that the Genesis creation account and the Noah's flood story were historically and scientifically real events; therefore, I had good reason to believe that the rest of the Bible was also historically and scientifically true; and if the Bible was trustworthy on these matters, then it seemed reasonable to believe that it was trustworthy on other matters as well. In particular, I felt that this gave me a solid rational justification for my belief in God. If science proved that the Genesis stories were literally true, then obviously it was reasonable to believe that God the creator existed. As far as I was concerned, I knew that I knew that God existed and I could prove it.

I recently told this story to an Orthodox Christian priest and when I got to this point he said: “Have you ever played the game Jenga?” We both laughed because he knew what was coming next. I had set myself up for a catastrophic failure of my belief system, I just didn't know it at the time. It was my youth pastor who pulled the first block from my Jenga stack when he brought up the question of God's existence at a Wednesday night meeting. My youth pastor at the time was a seminary student who had double majored in Bible and philosophy when he was in college. Looking back on it now after having studied philosophy myself, I can see that he gave our youth group a short course in epistemology that night. He argued that you don't have to know that you know something in order to know it. Therefore, we don't have to be able to prove God's existence in a strict sense in order to know that God exists. You can know without being able to prove. I disagreed and I was also slightly annoyed because my youth pastor seemed to suggest that God's existence could not be proved. But I thought that I could prove God's existence and that if I found out that I couldn't, then I would have to stop believing in God.

I can't remember the exact sequence of events but I believe it was around that same time that my youth pastor gave another lesson in which he touched on the topic of evolution. I don't remember him making any strong statements that he believed evolution was true, but I do remember him suggesting that it would not matter to him much if it were true. It wouldn't rock his faith. It wouldn't change his belief that God existed or that the Bible was trustworthy. That was a second Jenga block being pulled. Up until then, I hadn't really entertained the idea that evolution might be true. Many of the sources I drew from caricatured “evolutionists” as godless, laughably unscientific people conspiring against Christianity. These evolutionists believed in their theory of “goo to you by way of the zoo” not because it was scientifically reasonable, but because they couldn't stand to admit that the Bible and Christianity were true. So their scientific claims didn't need to be taken that seriously. When my youth pastor suggested that the theory of evolution could have credibility I was disturbed – disturbed because I greatly respected my youth pastor's opinions and therefore wondered if evolution might in fact have some credibility, and disturbed because evolution was not at all compatible with my belief system.

This led to a personal crisis. I was no longer certain of my scientific justification for belief in the Bible's authority and God's existence. At one level this was an epistemic crisis concerned with what I was able to know. At another level it was an authority crisis concerned with the sources that I relied on for knowledge. I had accepted the Bible as an authoritative book in my life because I believed that science gave it credibility. But what if science didn't give it credibility? Then what sources of authority was I left with?

I decided to go looking for other ways to prove God's existence. I could bracket the issue of evolution and revisit it later as long as I could at least establish God's existence on some other rational grounds. At the time I felt that my entire belief system and my faith was staked on my ability to find a proof for God's existence. This added an element of desperation to my search and made me rather depressed when I failed to find answers as quickly as I wanted. I talked with a few people and was distressed to find out that they couldn't prove God's existence either. I remember thinking to myself, “These people have been alive for decades and they can't even prove that what they believe is true. What on earth have they been doing their whole lives? Is it possible that this has never become a priority for them? Doesn't it bother them that their beliefs are apparently without solid justification?” I also remember laying in bed, unable to sleep, racking my brain for a non-circular argument for God's existence. I knew that reason needed some raw material to get started, but I was having trouble coming up with anything useful. I remember thinking and feeling in my gut that I would probably never be able to prove God's existence. That was a devastating moment for me. I was in despair. It was the one time in my life that I actually considered suicide. The two things that kept me alive were the fact that I'm a sissy (dying sounded painful and scary) and the hope that if I continued to search I might eventually be able to reason my way to God or at least to a better understanding of the truth of things, whatever that might be. I didn't become a full-blown atheist because I realized that I couldn't dis-prove God's existence any more than I could prove it. Instead, I became a deeply unhappy agnostic.

-David

Efficiently Amusing Ourselves to Death

The other day a salesman with an annoying duck on his polo came into my work and handed me a brochure. The product he was selling was "Peace of Mind", in a big, colorful font. “Oh man,” I thought. “How do I pass on this? I would love peace of mind. How did they do it? And in such a small brochure...tell me more!” The man proceeded to explain a bit more about what he was selling. It turns out he wasn't selling peace of mind per se but instead, insurance policies. He went on to warn me of nearly everything that could possibly go wrong in my lifetime - everything from cancer, eye problems, and MRIs to dismemberment and car crashes. When all of this wasn't enough, he then turned and asked if I was married. I had to say that I am and he responded by listing everything that could go wrong with my wife.

We learn at some point in adolescence that time is precious, that bad things can happen to us and that we need to be responsible with our time - taking care of our health, planning for our future, etc. As our adult lives continue, we become even more aware of the fact that time is a depleting and non-renewable resource. We've followed this idea so far in Western societies that efficiency has been regarded as one of the highest goals of any organization, school, church, team, or even an individual life.

In Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death, he discusses the invention of the clock as a significant sign that we have been devolving from "time-keepers, to time-savers, and now into time-servers." Efficiency has become a commandment. Too often efficiency has to do with the amount, or lack of, time that was used. If time is money, then less time obviously equals less money. Great! But what was sacrificed for efficiency? What was the fat that was cut? Was it effort? Was it quality? Was it attention to an individual? 

The problem was not the invention of the clock, for our inventions are the overflow of our passions and focus. The problem was that it was a piece of machinery we wanted. It was either our ego or our insecurities that wanted to create an "independent world of mathematically measurable sequences", as Postman puts it, in order to have a means of quantifying our significance. He goes on to say that “In the process (of relying on the clock), we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons and the authority of nature is superseded." He insists that "moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or natures. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created."

The clock appears as a sort of mirror on a wall, to which we can pose the question, "Who is the greatest of them all?” But the clock can only answer in terms of the criteria it was designed to measure. Postman argues, "With the invention of the clock, eternity ceased to serve as the measure and the focus of human events." Much of humanity would consider that a mission accomplished! In fact, Postman adds, "The ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God's supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment." We don't look at the clock 56 times a day because it is all that impressive; we look at it because it tells us how impressive we are.

The clock is an independent, objective authority. Because we have created it as such, we forget that it is tied to other aspects of the universe. Instead, we break up our day into small fragments and then ask of our invention, “Was I productive today? Was I significant?” But the clock’s objectivity renders it incapable of answering such questions. It is only capable of answering a different sort of question. “Did I send out three emails before 5:00 pm today?” The clock, if it reads 4:56 pm, can respond with a yes. It is incapable of assigning any significance to something that I have not already assigned myself. If sending out three emails was important to me, then the clock reading 4:56 pm will excite me because of my belief in the importance of those emails, not because of the clock.

In this way, the clock functions as both a mirror and an addictive master. I can ask comparative questions of it but I can also be enslaved by its answers. I am assigning the clock more power than it actually has; what I am effectively (perhaps subconsciously) doing is assigning my own self as the lead authority on what is significant in my life.

Ravi Zacharias often argues that "you cannot assign yourself your own significance." You need someone or something outside yourself to assign your identity. I find it interesting that many of us find it too difficult or even damaging to look to “someone" else in our lives to show us our significance. We would rather look to “something”. It will be less fulfilling in the long run but we choose it because we believe it will also be less hurtful.

When we are desperately searching for answers to the fundamental questions in our lives (“Am I talented? Am I smart? Am I loved? Am I significant?!”), there are many places we can turn. I turn on a video game and it says, "Congratulations, you beat level 4!" I hear, "You are talented." I ask my iPhone what time the sun rises and it says, “6:24 am." I hear, "You are smart because you have a tool that has the answers.” I sign on to Facebook and see 19 notifications from people that liked my picture. I hear, "You are loved." I check my Twitter and it says, "You now have 109 followers." I hear, "You are significant." 

The tragedy is that we break life up into so many pieces that it ceases to be whole any longer. The noise resounding from our inventions, "which are busy telling us how great we are", does an adequate job of clouding the doubt that we may not be that great. Or worse, it deafens the loving voice of a Creator who is waiting to assign us the greatest significance as His specific and intentional creation. I find it interesting that death is so closely related to this discussion of efficiency and significance. I also find it amazingly inspiring that in the resurrection of Christ, there is a power that has conquered and is no longer bound by time. While the length of time it took Jesus to be raised from the dead has been measured, time itself was not the healer, but only the revealer of how God would provide all his creation with healing. Jesus is a perfect blend of the temporary and eternal – an eternal God becoming man in a specific time and place. He is the intersection of the nature of man and the nature of God, who demonstrates that the divine Being is supremely powerful beyond the structure of time and, certainly, of the ticking clock.

By Tim

Searching and Finding the Lord God (Bird)

Somewhere in rural Arkansas, amidst marsh and swamp lands, lies the home of a critically endangered and possibly extinct bird called the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This unusually large and beautiful woodpecker has been on the endangered species list since 1967, when much of its habitat was destroyed by industrialization (the making of Singer sewing machine cases, in particular). Some ornithologists are convinced that the bird has completely died out while others have devoted their lives to studying and searching for the distinctive species, keeping hope alive that the bird still exists, using sporadic but inconclusive sightings over the last 60 years as their evidence.

The Ivory-billed woodpecker is also known as the Lord God Bird, because those who have seen it marvel at its beauty and proclaim, “Lord God, what a bird!” It has captured the imaginations of many, including musician Sufjan Stevens, who wrote a song for an NPR special about the bird and its “altar call”. I was immediately intrigued by the story of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and surprised that an “altar call” is actually a very poignant description of what I’ve felt in response to it.

The most breathtaking description of a sighting of this bird comes from two men who spotted it together - Tim Gallagher, a wildlife photographer from Cornell, and Bobby Harrison, a college professor from Alabama. Despite no conclusive evidence in the past 60 years that the bird was still alive, these two enthusiasts were convinced that it had survived. So when Gene Sparling, an Arkansas local, posted on a bird watching blog that he may have spotted the Ivory-billed while out kayaking one day, Gallagher and Harrison immediately dropped everything and headed to the swamp.

The two men, who kayaked out and waited expectantly near the spot where Sparling had first spotted the bird, were still floored when it burst out of the woods at close range, turning on its side to give them  a full view of its back. They were both elated and yelled, “Ivory-billed woodpecker!” and, with tears in their eyes, began to scramble over logs ad branches for another precious glimpse. Gallagher described it as “getting slapped in the face”. Both had just seen something they’d been waiting for and searching for their entire lives.

Though the name Lord God Bird is supposedly unrelated to the person of the Lord God, I can’t help but notice the similarities between the searching and the finding of both. Simeon and Anna are specific instances of this, living at a time when the nation of Israel had nearly given up hope for the coming of the Messiah. They were the remnant that believed in the reality of his appearance during their lifetime and were rewarded when they recognized him in the temple for who he was, even though he was only a baby. Like Gallagher and Harrison, they knew what they were waiting and hoping for, devoted their lives to finding it, and rejoiced at the completion of their search.

There is also a correlation between the urgency with which Gallagher and Harrison left their homes to look for this bird and the single-minded search for the kingdom of God that resounds over and over again in the prophets and in Jesus’ parables. Hosea 6 says, “Let us acknowledge the Lord, let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” In the same spirit of devotion, Jesus talks about grandiose examples of treasure found hidden a field, compelling a man to sell all he owns in order to buy the field. Even the disciples, who are sometimes portrayed as fickle and dull in their understanding, “immediately” leave their fishing nets and follow Jesus when he calls them.

In addition to the similarities of the search, I’ve noticed some similarities between the Lord God Bird and the Lord God himself. First of all, he typically doesn’t show himself when I’m not looking for him. Just as the woodpecker must be searched for intently, I must wait and look for God in order to recognize him when he appears. Secondly, just because he does not appear for long periods of time does not mean he isn’t there. Hope, trust and obedience are tested and cultivated in the times when I don’t see him. Then after a period of waiting, he breaks through the woods and into the clear sky, so to speak, and the sight of him is more awe-inspiring than before.

Buechner sums it up perfectly: “As a poet, Jesus is maybe at his best in describing the feeling you get when you glimpse the Thing itself – the kingship of the king official at last and all the world his coronation. It’s like finding a million dollars in a field, he saws, or a jewel worth a king’s ransom.” Or, to insert our modern example, it’s like sighting a bird that’s supposed to be extinct. “It’s like finding something you hated to lose and thought you’d never find again – an old keepsake, a stray sheep, a missing child. When the kingdom really comes, it’s as if the thing you lost and thought you’d never find again is you.”

By Ruth

Related videos:
"Lord God Bird" by Sufjan Stevens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-GDRP8eAtg
CBS News video about Sparling, Gallagher, and Harrison: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=947969n

Anarchy and the Dark Side of God

I have just completed The Man who was Thursday. It was the first novel by G.K Chesterton that I have ventured to read. Rest assured it did not disappoint. One reviewer summed it up well when he said that this book is either comprised of the most nonsensical witty banter or it is the profoundest of stories for all of humanity.

The book focused on a secret council of anarchists who throughout the story discover the truth that they are all working undercover for the same character named “Sunday”. The revelations that are worked through in this book brought up a lot of interesting thoughts for me - the discreet battle between good and evil and the disguises of each, the different aspects of chaos and order in society and similarly the attractions and fears of anarchy and revolt against governing authorities.

Anarchy has some obvious attractions. It empowers the individual to be, to do, to believe what they choose. It is a sort of freedom that is felt as “glory and isolation” in being one’s own authority. The danger associated with anarchy (that is not often feared enough) directly corresponds to the potential for evil that is in every individual, no matter how noble or just the revolt may be.

It would appear from the bumper stickers and late night television shows I’ve seen recently that our culture is working hard to foster a society devoid of these pesky governing authorities. We know and have seen the corruptibility of such powers - like the church, religion, government, even gender or family roles. We want to live in a culture where an individual is free to believe whatever he or she or “it” wants. My fear is that we have not yet considered the digression of this way of thinking. Isn’t this the forerunner to individualistic entitlement? Why are we shocked when someone takes entitlement to a horrifically evil conclusion?

We are told sexuality is one of the areas in which we deserve to be satisfied. We are justified in doing some pretty odd things as long as it turns us on and gratifies us physically. Then we look on with apparent shock when someone digresses this thinking into a power hungry sexual abuse tragedy like the Sandusky scandal at Penn State.

We are told freedom of speech is a staple for this country. We can say anything we want as long as we are not taking any physical action against another person. So in a lot of ways, we are allowed, practically encouraged, to breed small pockets of entrenched fear and hate for other people groups. Then we are bewildered when we turn on the news and see a white supremacist band member killed after he went into a Sikh Temple and opened fire.

We are becoming convinced that gender should have less meaning and that the standards which men and women are held to should be the same. However, two days after the Aurora movie theater shooting the top article on CNN.com was about three men who “upheld the man code” by diving in front of their women friends. So somehow the moment of utter chaos and evil snapped us back to standards that are all of a sudden no longer disgraceful hindrances but beautiful acts of valor.

I think it is fair to assume that we want freedom but we also want safety. Does safety always include some sort of authority? Perhaps what we have decided we need is something to set those curious lines, the lines between being safe and being free, for us. If only we had an objective type of governing authority, one that is not capable of prejudice in race, gender, or religion. Maybe we should just have science, math and logic be our governing authorities. These should work because they are non-partisan and objective, right?

So what would it look like if we were governed by science? Instead of holding Mr. Sandusky responsible for the abuse of children, perhaps we can find that he had something known as Histrionic Disorder (defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriately seductive behavior). This way we can be assured he wasn’t just a normal guy who was capable of doing some really bad things. We can have a scientific explanation that shows he was a diseased outlier. We can be assured that we have nothing to fear from a systemic standpoint.

Let’s also say that James Holmes (Aurora movie theater shooter) was one of these crazies too. We can come up with a good scientific/medical term for it, so that we know exactly why he did what he did, or at least that he was incapable of adhering to our ethical paradigms. This way we will have no reason to fear the way our society operates in its current condition.

Hmmm… but perhaps, this whole science thing isn’t giving enough respect to the digression of perverse egoism that has flooded our culture. If we write these men off as simply “bad eggs” than we don’t have to approach the difficult task of recognizing the potential for evil in our own behavior.

Please understand that I am not advocating that school masters should go back to spanking misbehaving children or that the Church should be allowed to take offerings for made up ministries. But we need to be aware when we eliminate all conscience-driven authorities, that's exactly what we have done. Science is not capable of making ethical decisions.

In one of his other masterworks Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton describes the Holy Church in an example that relates well to this argument.

“Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the center of the island; and their song had ceased.”

And here is the freedom that Christianity can foster. Only with a powerful but loving father is a child able to truly feel safe and to be free. Loving so that the child knows the father has his best intentions in mind, and powerful so that the child knows the father is truly capable of protecting. The question then becomes the decision of the loving father to allow his children to suffer. This was probably the most interesting part of the book. The character “Sunday” is revealed as the source of both the peace and the peril that the other characters go through.

Here is the main character’s description of encountering “Sunday”.

"When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a jest. Bad is so bad that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good that we feel certain that evil could be explained."

This is at the foundation of my faith. When I have gone through trials I have thought good just the rare occurrence of something going right for me. But when I have seen true goodness in my life, I have been assured that I am not seeing the whole story. It is a sort of eager relief that comes in knowing surely that there is a God and he loves me. What excitement awaits the deeper understanding of this darker side of God, not evil but simply unknown. The depth of his universe would make the suffering of his people “comparable to a father playing hide and seek with his children.” I am astonished and eager, awaiting the great magician, the loving father to reveal his undeniable mastery of intermingled chaos and order.

Tim

Meditation

I recently started reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.  I've been meaning to read it for years, and I'm finally getting around to it now.  The book opens with these words: “Superficiality is the curse of our age.  The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.  The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”  Foster's diagnosis is that much of our culture (including our religious culture) is shallow and lacking substance.  His solution is that we need the spiritual disciplines if we are to be people of substance and depth.

The first discipline he writes about is meditation.  If you're like me, when you hear the word “meditation” you picture a Buddhist monk sitting in the lotus position speaking the mystical syllable “om.”  I've never done meditation like that, but I have practiced meditation in some form or other for years and I've wondered about different types of meditation and the historical and spiritual roots of each type.  I'm very cautions when it comes to spiritual disciplines that have roots in other religious traditions.  Yoga, for instance, originated as a spiritual discipline within Hinduism.  I know of some people who do what they call “Christ-centered” yoga and I know of lots of people who practice yoga merely as another form of exercise.  But I still wonder about its place in the life of a Christian.  (For an interesting perspective on this topic read this.  I offer it without endorsement or criticism but simply as a perspective worth being familiar with).  Similarly, I've wondered about different forms of meditation and what role meditation should play in the life of a Christian.

Foster affirms that there is a long-standing and thoroughly orthodox tradition of Christian meditation that is fundamentally distinct from Eastern forms of meditation.  Eastern meditation aims to empty the mind, shed the illusion of one's personal identity, escape the cycle of reincarnation, and thereby come to nirvana.  The goal is total detachment.  By contrast, the aim of Christian meditation is to commune with a personal God, to listen for God.  This does require a kind of temporary detachment, but that is not the ultimate goal.  As Foster puts it: “The detachment from the confusion all around us is in order to have a richer attachment to God.”  Christian meditation is the discipline of listening for and responding to God's voice.

Foster outlines four different types of meditation, but the central form for Christianity is meditation on Scripture.  Foster differentiates this from exegesis or study of Scripture.  The point of scriptural meditation is not to dissect the text, but to internalize it.  I think of all the forms of meditation Foster talks about, this one may be the hardest for me.  My natural posture towards Scripture is academic.  I love to analyze, question, investigate, and dissect texts.  In high school my youth pastor made me aware of the various tools available for studying scripture at a deep level.  I particularly remember the studies he led in conjunction with our church’s Bible quiz team.  We studied I & II Corinthians, John, Hebrews and I & II Peter all at a depth that I had never done before and have not done since.  I felt like I was really digging into Scripture for the first time in my life.  We wrote outlines of whole books of the Bible based on what we thought the author was trying to communicate.  We summarized and analyzed arguments presented in pastoral letters.  We read commentaries and compared various perspectives and interpretations of passages.  All that biblical study was very meaningful and important for me, but at times I would have to say that despite studying Scripture I have neglected to meditate on Scripture.

Think of it like this: if Scripture is food, scriptural study is like a nutritional analysis of the food.  We can run tests on the food and analyze it to determine its makeup and nutritional properties and such.  This kind of information can be very useful for deciding what we should eat, or avoid eating, and what exactly it is that we are eating.  But we don't get nourishment from the food unless we actually eat it.  Scriptural meditation is eating the food.  It's a discipline aimed at internalizing the truth spoken to us through Scripture.  And while I'm convinced that Scripture needs to be studied, analyzed, and given careful exegesis, and that such study is part of a transformation of our minds that needs to take place, I also think that meditation on Scripture is equally important.  I think of the words quoted by Jesus: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  And then I picture devout Jews at the Wailing Wall chanting Scripture, reading it, reciting it, thinking deeply about it, consuming it.  That is what meditation on Scripture looks like.

Another form of meditation that Foster describes is “re-collection” or “centering down.”  Re-collection is the type of meditation that comes most naturally to me, probably in part because I'm introverted.  Foster writes that re-collection is “a time to become still, to enter into the recreating silence, to allow the fragmentation of our minds to become centered.”  I try to do this kind of re-collecting every day, usually during my lunch break.  It helps me refocus my attention and keep my life in perspective.

The other two forms of meditation are meditation on creation and meditation on current events.  I won’t take the time to outline those here but you can make some good guesses about what those entail.  The common theme in all of the forms of meditation is that they focus on communion with God and listening for God’s voice.  Meditation is a discipline aimed at fostering closeness with God.  My life is about to get very busy but I want to keep it from becoming frothy.  I want to be a person of depth who has something to offer a shallow world.  Meditation is one way that I hope to do that.


-David

Dependent Independents

Last week, people all over the United States celebrated Independence Day, also known as the 4th of July, the latter being the less meaningful name but practically helpful in ensuring that we all celebrate on the same date. Growing up in an Anabaptist tradition that emphasized citizenship in God's kingdom above allegiance to any earthly power, my family primarily celebrated what most Americans celebrate most joyfully on the 4th - that we all get a day off of work! We enjoyed the typical cookout at the park, some ultimate frisbee or soccer, and fireworks in the evening, with little or no mention of the anniversary of our nation's Declaration of Independence from Britain over 200 years prior.

I'm not suggesting that I ever had a problem with that approach, as anyone who knows me well would testify. I've struggled with the idea of patriotism in the life of a Christian almost as long as I can remember. To top it off with some good ole irony from God, I was born on Flag Day. But this 4th of July, in light of my recent reading of Alasdair MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals, my thoughts turned to the nature of independence, dependence, and the relationship between the two.

Thomas Jefferson understood that you can't have one without the other. In the Declaration of Independence, he asserts that "these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown". But he ends the document with these words, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." While Jefferson declared collective independence of the States from Britain, he also proclaimed mutual dependence on the individual level.

In Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre observes that much of Western philosophy has developed around the idea that a fully flourishing human being is one who has achieved the state of being an independent rational thinker. He does not dispute this view but shows that is an incomplete picture. Through brilliant observation and argument (I will only scratch the surface of it), he explains how we are constantly dependent on the people around us, most notably anyone in authority over us, to develop into flourishing independent rational thinkers.

What does it mean to be an independent rational thinker? MacIntyre says that the transformation involves the cultivation of three capabilities. First is the ability to evaluate our reasons for action. Second is the ability to distance ourselves from our present desires. And third is the ability to imagine alternative realistic futures. Interestingly enough, none of these abilities can be attained without deliberate intervention from outside sources (parents, teachers, pastors, coaches, etc.) during the course of our development.

MacIntyre provides insightful descriptions of what the failure to train these capabilities looks like an adult. "One danger is that those who have failed to become sufficiently detached from their own immediate desires, for whom desire for their and the good has not become to a sufficient degree overriding, are unlikely to recognize this fact about themselves. And so what they present to themselves as a desire for their own good and for the good may in fact be and often enough is some unacknowledged form of infantile desire, a type of desire that has been protected from evaluative criticism. Hence in deliberating they both reason from unsound premises and act from badly flawed motivation."

He also speaks in regard to the failure to train the ability to imagine alternative realistic futures. "Educational failure in this respect can be of two contrasting kinds. On the one hand, it can produce a constriction of the sense of possibility through the inculcation of false beliefs about how far our lives are determined by uncontrollable circumstances. On the other it can encourage a giving way to self-indulgent phantasy which blurs the difference between realistic expectation and wishful thinking. And either of these will render us defective practical reasoners."

Upon my initial readings of these descriptions, I immediately began to identify the people I know who fit into these categories. "Yes, what's her face always thinks that she is acting for the good of the whole when it is obvious to everyone else that she is blindingly selfish." Or "So and so has such an unrealistic view of himself and what he's capable of accomplishing." Of course, I sobered a bit when I realized that part of the curse of defective reasoning is lack of self-awareness, which means that there are likely defects in my own reasoning about myself of which I am currently unaware and need other people to bring to my attention.

In addition, many of the people whom I identified as defective practical reasoners are also people in whose lives I hold some measure of influence. In a coaching context, I have a select group of women who are entrusted to my care for a season. Part of my job is to teach them the game of volleyball but I am also responsible for assisting them in the transition from child to adult, the very transition that MacIntyre is discussing. The fact that some of them have not made the transition successfully is evidence of a collective failure, in which I play a part. As MacIntyre says, "The history of the self making this transition is of course not only a history of that particular self, but also a history of those particular others whose presence or absence, intervention or lack of intervention, are of crucial importance in determining how far the transition is successfully completed."

In order to continue on my journey of development as an independent rational thinker and to help others along the same path, I need a set of virtues. Specifically, I need, among others, "the risk-taking and patience of courage, justice in assigning tasks and praise, the temperateness required for discipline, the cheerful wit of an amiable will." In some ways as a coach, I am a less influential and less significant version of a parent, for whom MacIntyre has specific directions. "(Parents) have to make the object of their continuing care and their commitment this child, just because it is their child for whom and to whom they are uniquely responsible. Secondly, their initial commitment has to be in important respects unconditional. ... 'However things turn out, I will be there for you.' And thirdly, although it is the fact that it is their child that makes this child their responsibility, it is the needs of the child, and not their own needs in relationship to the child that have to be paramount. And all three aspects of the relationship involve a systematic refusal to treat the child in a way that is proportional to its qualities and aptitudes."

The challenge that I've received from MacIntyre's work is twofold. First, I must learn to view myself not merely as an independent rational thinker but as someone who is simultaneously dependent and independent. My ability to function and reason independently is the direct result of the investment and care of other people throughout my life, particularly but not limited to my most formative stages. As MacIntyre says, "There is no point in our development towards and in our exercise of independent practical reasoning at which we cease altogether to be dependent on particular others."

Secondly, I have a responsibility to tend to my own development of the virtues, so that my relationships with others will aid and not deter them in the process of becoming an independent reasoner. "To participate in this network of giving and receiving as the virtues require, I have to understand that what I am called upon to give may be quite disproportionate to what I have received and that those to whom I am called upon to give may well be those from whom I shall receive nothing." I must be able to recognize a need and give well out of the virtues of courage, justice, temperateness and cheerfulness.

This year as I celebrate my own independence and that of our country, I do it with an acknowledgement of our mutual dependence on each other, a sense of gratitude for everyone whose giving has allowed me to develop into some form of an independent rational thinker, and an awareness of my own participation and responsibility within the network of giving and receiving.

By Ruth

Once upon a time...

Fairy dust, magic wands, flying horses, a prince that against all odds slays a 30 foot, fire-breathing dragon. For most of my childhood, stories like Robin Hood, Chronicles of Narnia, and embarrassingly even Sleeping Beauty itched the right spot for a boy like me. In my later adolescent years, stories of Jedi Knights or Hobbits and Elves were more often the stimulation. Then sometime in high school this love for the fictional, this subconscious love for the unbelievable suddenly become a conscious boycott of the ridiculous. I can't say what started it and I can't say what even encouraged it other than something inside me continually pushed me towards more concrete realities in both books and film. I began to look on my beloved childhood favorites with arrogant sympathy as I had come through a sort of graduation from the fictional world. I say arrogant, only because it had a definite sense of arriving at a truer version of reality even if it meant part of me had died. I found myself turning more deliberately to movies based on real life stories or at least based on actual events - movies based on wars (Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates) or sports movies like Hoosiers and Rudy that were based on actual stories.

A short time after that something in me began to resent some of these films as well. Now, I wanted something that not only was based on actual events but that stopped with this non-sense of concluding with the same "happily ever after" type moment. Needless to say, times of fairy dust, magic wands, flying horses and princes outdueling fire breathing dragons were well behind me. My only reality of a "fairy tale" came from Davidson beating a top ranked opponent in the NCAA Basketball tournament in late March. It was not for lack of effort that I did not enjoy such works. I was enslaved in classes that forced Great Expectations, Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies upon me, as we all were. My friends begged me to watch movies like the Dark Knight, Transformers or Spiderman 1, 2 and 3. My voice did not waiver in response to their pleadings. The answer was always a resounding “NO”, possibly even a "hell no" on occasion.

So, where am I now? Still bent towards non-fiction over fiction for sure, but perhaps more willing to admit this doesn't mean I'm bent towards reality over non-reality. A little bit ago I finished reading Telling the Truth by Fredrich Buechner. His last chapter is entitled "The Gospel as Fairy Tale". It gets at the heart of what I am trying to say. He describes the Gospel of the Bible as fairy tale, not meaning untrue, but as a story of transformation, wonder and mystery, where there is evil in disguise and good in disguise too, the latter presenting itself as no less than a common carpenter.

A bit ago I had read a biography of Chesterton in which a critic of his wrote, "Who reads Chesterton for knowledge - unless it be for knowledge of Chesterton's curious mind? For Chesterton's highest aim, as we knew of old, is to recount the adventures of his soul among masterworks." And herein lie the potential shortcomings with my non-fiction. I feel a stifling limit to what I can purely describe as my reality without bringing in a sense of the extraordinary, the unbelievable, the fairy tale, if you will. Fiction can be free of the pesky limitations of details, free from exact explanation, free from full understanding. I may wish at times that my life was bound by my understanding but oh how limited an existence that would prove to be. For when I think of the most remarkable times or events in my life, all of them came through paths of uncertainty. My "adventures of my soul" have been successive tales starting with the uncertainty of events, leading to incomprehensible changes, and culminating with small glimpses of understanding.

Perhaps this is what fiction does for us, as Buechner writes, "Maybe above all they (fairy tales) are tales about transformations where all creatures are revealed in the end as what they truly are." If you take all of my love for non-fiction, for the true wartime heroics or fantastic athletic feats, it still comes down to a longing of the soul to seek its fulfillment, its resting place. The appeal of the story goes beyond what actually has happened. It is entrenched in the emotion and elation of the bleeding through of what we thought impossible from an even deeper level of truth.

It's as if my soul’s experience has again and again replicated the great plotline format my class learned in 4th grade English or the great structure of a narrative that Hollywood has made more than a living upon. The conflict, the quest, the seeking of fulfillment to the trouble that has come upon our dear protagonist The climax, the transformation, the turning point. The resolution and the "happily ever after". This perhaps is the metanarrative, a universal structure to our collective AND individual storyboards. For on my own storyboard I have recognized that I am moved by the emotion of the conflict, driven by the hope of resolution and SLOWLY purified by the recurring process.

A few months ago, I was asked by a close friend whether I believed in the 6 day creation account in Genesis. While the question was fair, I felt that she was asking it with the unstated assumption that to take the Bible literally is the only way to believe it as truth. Theologians and scientists will continue to argue over the literal truth of that story but the narrative of Genesis has proved itself to be true and continues to prove itself in my own life. I read the story of Adam with his separation from God, his disobedience, and his desire for redemption and reconciliation with his Creator and I feel at my core that it might as well have been me.

So perhaps I'm not ready to join a Shakespeare club and sit in groups quoting the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream but I believe I am unpeeling in my own existence the reality outside the tangible. Perhaps C.S Lewis was a bit of a prophet, especially in my life, when he said, "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again." 


Tim

Life, Death, and Existence

I'm not sure what I find more shocking: the knowledge that I exist or the knowledge that I will die.  Both are utterly mysterious to me when I stop and think about them.  It used to bother me that I was not consulted before being brought into existence.  I felt like I should have been given a say in the matter and it angered me that I hadn't been.  It's one of the things that I find so strange about my personal existence; I didn't get to choose it.  God never came to me and said, “I'm thinking about making you a person.  Here's how it would work.  I'd give you a mind and body that somehow work together to make you a weird intermediate creature, something between a gorilla and an angel.  You'll live for a while and then you'll die.  I would try to explain what happens after death but you really aren't capable of understanding it.  At a bare minimum let's just say it involves remaining in existence for eternity.  What do you think?  Are you in?”

The first time I envisioned this scenario, I also noticed the obvious paradox.  How could someone consult me before I existed?  They would have to bring me into existence in order to consult me but at that point it would be too late for the consultation.  The paradox bothered me almost as much as the fact that I wasn't consulted.  Let's ignore the paradox for a moment and pretend that it were possible for me to have been consulted on the matter of my existence.  In my middle school days if I had been given a choice about my existence I think I would have said, “No, thanks.  I'd rather not ever exist, unless we can work out something where I am annihilated when I die.  Life is nice, but living forever sounds incomprehensibly dreadful to me.”  But I wasn't consulted and here I am.

Just to clarify, my mindset wasn't suicidal (I did entertain thoughts of suicide once in my life, but only briefly).  I didn't want death; I wanted non-existence.  It was my belief (and is still my belief) that death does not result in personal annihilation.  We survive our death in some fashion and we continue to exist for eternity.  Suicide would not have ended my existence, it would only have changed it in some way that I can’t really comprehend.  The prospect of continuing to exist literally forever was and is even more incomprehensible to me.  Dreadful is the best word that I can think of to describe it.  Terrifying is another one.  Why wasn't I given a chance to opt out of this thing called existence?

This past weekend I spent a lot of time basking in the beauty of nature.  It started on Friday night with a powerful thunderstorm.  (It still didn’t rival a good Indiana thunderstorms, but for a Pennsylvania thunderstorm it was very good!)  After a stressful week I sat on the back porch of my house and drank in the experience.  I find peace and strength in thunderstorms in a way that I can’t quite explain.  I think part of it is that thunderstorms forcefully take my mind off of my day-to-day concerns and focus my attention on the raw beauty that surrounds us.  Friday night I sat on my back porch and thanked God for nature.

The thunderstorm left the earth fresh and clean the next morning.  The humidity was gone.  The air was clear.  The sun was shining but occasionally dimmed by a passing cloud.  There was a soft, intermittent breeze.  Birds were chirping and flitting between trees.  On this morning after the beautiful storm I sat on my front porch and took it all in.  I think I was even sipping a cup of African tea.  I was overcome with the beauty of it all.  As I watched the birds in our front yard I thought to myself, “What are they doing here?  What is any of this doing here?  Why does anything exist at all and why should anything that exists be beautiful?”  Of course there are ugly parts of nature as well.  I could do without intestinal worms, ticks and cancers; but it strikes me as profound that nature is even capable of beauty and ugliness and that we as humans are able to create and perceive beauty and ugliness.

I think about beauty when I cook or bake.  Humans are the only animals that make an art out of food preparation and presentation.  Lions kill an antelope and dive right in with their teeth.  It's a big bloody mess and the lions don't care what their meal looks like.  But humans prepare meals and present them in bowls or on plates and platters, with garnishes, complementing side dishes, utensils and iced beverages in glassware.  Humans kill a deer, butcher it into steaks, marinade it in sauces, grill it over a fire and mount the head of the deer on a wall in their home.  Lions don't do these things, and it's not because they don't have the time or resources, or because they don't have opposable thumbs.  The fundamental reason lions don’t present their meals is because lions do not seem to be aware of beauty, much less that their meals could be an occasion for beauty.  It's true that there may be a kind of savage and raw beauty in watching a lion eat, but the lion cannot appreciate this.  There is a qualitative difference between the way lions and people are able to approach food in particular, and reality in general.  When I experience a well-presented meal that is both a treat for the eyes and the toungue, I get a taste of beauty that makes me glad to be a human.  And when I feel thunder in my chest, or watch a bird in flight it makes me thankful to be alive.

The beauty of life is a gift.  The flip side to this gift is the unsettling ugliness of death.  Both are strange to me.  While I marvel at the beauty of all the living things around me, I also know that everything will die.  Just the other week one of my housemates was taking care of an injured hummingbird.  We aren't sure what was wrong with it but it couldn't fly and it was obviously scared.  My friend created a terrarium for it and gave it a bowl of saturated sugar-water solution, but the bird didn't seem able to find the nectar on its own.  It just sat in a corner with its heart pounding rapidly, its whole body pulsing with each beat.  It was a beautiful bird, delicate, elegant, shimmering emerald green.  And it was dying.  It's heart would soon stop beating and its beauty would be turned into a decaying lump of feathers, organs, and bones.  Even though it was just a hummingbird, I couldn't help thinking that some of the beauty of the world was dying along with that bird and that death is always a real loss both for the living creature that dies and for those who are bereaved of its presence in the world.

In the case of humans, death is an even greater loss.  Part of the beauty of this world lies in our ability to share life with other living things and people.  When people die we lose something valuable.  As a Christian I have hope in life after death, but that does not change the fact that something precious is lost in death.  Even Jesus himself who came to conquer death wept at the tomb of Lazarus.  He knew that he was going to raise him from the dead, but he still cried.  Why this display of emotion?  I think Jesus cried for at least two reasons.  He was empathizing with those around him who were mourning Lazarus’ death.   But I also think he was personally mourning the loss of Lazarus, acknowledging the legitimate sadness of what had happened, and grieving the loss of one of his friends, even if it was only a temporary loss.  Death is not the end, but it is still very much a loss.

In times of death we are often reminded of the fragileness of life and the fact that every living thing must eventually die.  Observed from the outside looking in on the world this is perhaps nothing more than trivia, a mere fact.  But we come to understand the gravity of this reality when we view it from the inside, as living creatures ourselves.  To say “everything dies” can come across as trite, even to ourselves.  It too easily registers in our minds as “everything out there dies.”  We don't take its meaning personally.  The full existential force of the truth comes through only when we are able to say to ourselves “I am going to die,” and we let the knowledge sink in.

Reflecting on one's own death can be life changing.  In American culture the knowledge of one's death is often used as a license to do whatever you want.  It is conceived as a liberating knowledge to live for yourself, in the moment.  Cake succinctly expresses this mentality in their song Sheep go to Heaven: “As soon as you're born you start dying, so you might as well have a good time.”  It's a common response to the reality of death and it is echoed all throughout American culture in catch phrases (yolo) and personal philosophies (live every day like it's your last).  It's a hedonistic, self-indulgent response to the human condition and sometimes I find myself caught up in it.

Last night I was at a drive in movie theater for the first time ever.  After the first movie I wanted some popcorn so I got in line at the concession stand.  I made my order and as the attendant was getting my popcorn I notice a sign that said “Deep fried Oreos – 3 for $2.”  Sure, it sounds like a terrible idea, but where else was I ever going to get deep fried Oreos?  The attendant was coming back with my popcorn.  Should I get them or not?  Yolo!  “Can I also get some deep fried Oreos, please?”  That is a rather harmless example, but it illustrates the point.

There is another way that one can respond to the knowledge of one’s death and that is to take an eternal perspective.  Death is not the end.  And although it blows my mind to think about it, and scares me to death, I do believe that we are eternal beings.  Furthermore, I believe that the things we do in this life will influence the nature of our existence after death.  This concept appears in many of the world religions.  In Buddhism it shows up as the theory of karma.  In Christianity we have the concepts of heaven and hell.  Both religions place our lives within an eternal context which gives us a different perspective on our lives and how we ought to live them.  As the author of Ecclesiastes concludes in his book:

“Now all has been heard;

    here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments,

    for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment,

    including every hidden thing,

    whether it is good or evil.”  (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

The knowledge of our death should cause us to reflect on the eternal and to order our lives around it.  We live in the moment, but we should not live for the moment.  Death is a great loss, but only because life is such a great gift.  It is out of love that God has granted us life and we should enjoy its beauty thankfully.  The prospect of eternal existence is still dreadful to me but I have hope that the terror can be swallowed up in the infinite love of the One who created this beautiful universe.  I’ve caught glimpses of it on earth in times of prayer and conversations with friends when I’ve thought to myself, “I don’t ever want this to end,” and I truly meant it.

-David

Ephesus and the gospel: an unlikely story

Anyone who has attended a professional or college sporting event in a large stadium can identify with the electrifying thrill of being part of a crowd that is passionately unified about one game, one team, one experience.  The sheer number of people involved lends a feeling of power to the event. As the saying goes, “and the crowd goes wild.” Wild is the right word to use because there is a sense of controlled chaos when this happens.

Consider two clutch shots from the recent NBA and NCAA basketball seasons and imagine you are part of these wild crowds. The first is Rajon Rondo’s 3-pointer near the end of game 7 of the Eastern Conference semi-finals against Philadelphia.

The second, and more chaotic as the crowd rushes the court afterward, is Christian Watford’s buzzer beater to lift Indiana University over Kentucky.

TD Garden, Boston’s home court where Rondo hit his shot, has a capacity of 17,565 people. Similary, Assembly Hall in Indiana, where Watford sunk the game winning three, holds 17,472 people. Having that many people in passionate agreement about one thing at one time is a remarkable (and loud) experience.

Now imagine that you are in Ephesus in the first century AD, at this amphitheatre: http://www.360cities.net/image/ephesusamphitheatre#43.70,17.60,70.0. It is filled to its capacity of 25,000 people, over 50% percent more people than either TD Garden or Assembly Hall can house. The crowd is irate and confused and has been shouting in unison for over 2 hours (longer than the length of an entire basketball game), “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Can you envision the intensity and magnitude of this scene? This is exactly what Paul experienced while he was in Ephesus.

Ephesus in was a very significant city in antiquity. It served as the Roman capital of Asia Minor in the first century and was also a commercial center for land and sea trade. The city was wealthy, as evidenced by its enormous structures that are made primarily out of marble – a very impressive sight. When I walked through the streets, the power and influence it once boasted is palpable. Last but certainly not least, Ephesus was home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the great Temple of Artemis.

Ephesus presented an environment that was very hostile to Christianity. The culture of the city was drenched with the worship of the fertility goddess Artemis. It was a facet of daily life in ancient Ephesus. This cult in its various forms with the goddess called by different names (Artemis, Diana, Sybile) had existed for over 5000 years before Jesus was born. Imagine the rich history of Christianity that has grown and developed over 2000 years. At the point when Paul reached Ephesus, the cult of Artemis had a history over twice as long as what Christianity has now. It was deeply entrenched and woven into the fabric of the culture. In the mind of most reasonable people, Christianity (or any foreign religion for that matter), would not have stood a chance in such a city and such a time.

Nevertheless, Paul faithfully preached and taught in Ephesus for over two years, “so that all the Greeks and Jews who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.” (Acts 19:10) Eventually, a silversmith named Demetrius began to recognize the Way (as Christianity was called) as a potential threat to his business of making silver shrines of Artemis. This fact can only speak to the great power that God was displaying in Ephesus at that time. To think that any religion could make a dent in the cult of Artemis would be almost laughable. But God was using Paul at the time to drive out evil spirits, heal diseases, and convert even sorcerers to this new religion. Demetrius in his wisdom recognized this as a major potential problem to the economy of Ephesus.

He called together all of the workmen in related trades that made a living off the cult of Artemis. When he explained to them the danger of the Way, and what it could mean for their businesses, they were infuriated. Soon the entire city of Ephesus was stirred up and rushed to the amphitheater. This is where we again pick up our image of the wild crowd of 25,000 people, roaring in unison for over two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

Being Christians in the midst of that crowd must have been a little bit like being the lone Utah Jazz fans at a Celtics game Tim and I went to in March. Obviously, the comparison fails when you place the two events on a scale of importance, but the sense of aloneness is similar. Two rows in front of us sat a man and woman in classic Jon Stockton jerseys. Needless to say, they were heckled and berated for the entire game, most notably by a boisterous half-drunk Celtics fan who, after a good Boston play, would stand up, point and yell witty remarks at the couple. They were very clearly in the minority.

Thankfully, the power of Jesus is stronger than the power of John Stockton, and despite the tremendous odds against it, Christianity flourished and made Ephesus a significant city in its history. Paul not only lived there for two years but wrote 1 Corinthians while there. The letters Paul wrote to Timothy were addressed to him while Timothy was assisting the church in Ephesus. And John’s three letters were also written while he was giving leadership to the church in Ephesus. Lastly, it was in Ephesus that Paul gave his only recorded address to Christians. All of Paul’s other speeches that were written down were given to unbelievers. In his farewell address to the Ephesians, Paul says, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”

It is sobering to note that even after the display of God’s power which caused Christianity to grow in Ephesus, John in the book of Revelation records these hard words for the church there. “I know your deeds, your hard work and perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”

There is a striking contrast between the words of Paul and the picture that John gives us of the church in Ephesus. Paul never waivers in his understanding and fulfillment of his ultimate task in life. On the other hand, the church of Ephesus, even while struggling and persevering, has forgotten their first love.

As I’ve considered the history of Ephesus, I’m challenged in a few directions. First, I believe I have no authority to determine what situation is too hopeless for the gospel to spread or what ground is too infertile for it to take root. The power of God supercedes all of our expectations. My responsibility, as Paul stated, is to “complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me.” Secondly, I must hold onto my first love, keeping Christ at the front and center. In doing those two things, the grace and power of God is given room to work in the world. In the end, all that is left at the site of the temple of Artemis is one solitary column – all else has been taken away, recycled (in the Haggia Sophia, somewhat ironically) or destroyed. But the gospel of God’s grace that Paul preached has continued to spread.

Remains of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus

In Defense of Optimism

I do not typically enjoy being around optimists. They exhaust me. Usually when I am interacting with them, my mind strains vigorously to sift through their positivity and find something phony so that I may at last absolve myself the responsibility of taking the person seriously. I suppose I am assuming that most optimists are not being completely authentic in their response to a given situation. Perhaps I do not despise optimists as much as I simply dislike people who are inauthentic. For if I am completely honest with myself, I believe there lies in me the makings of a closet optimist. Sure, on the exterior I like to remain cynical and scoff at those that are dandied and disillusioned by the temporary sugar highs of life. But internally, I am similarly wired, with hopes tied to emotions of improvements to be made to my life and situation, with the overall belief that at its foundation existence is good. Or as John Mayer might sing, "I know the heart of life is good."

For the last couple weeks I have been reading a biography of G.K Chesterton called Defiant Joy. The title is fantastic for such a man and the excerpts the author uses from Chesterton's writings and critics are well chosen. The author (Belmonte) gives the refreshing image of a man who is the most perfect depiction of the word jovial. Anyone who has spent any amount of time reading Chesterton knows with what light, wit and life the man writes. Chesterton has an amazing ability to bring humor and light to profound topics while somehow not disrupting the seriousness of the subject.

As so often happens when I read Chesterton, he slaps me upside the head with the simplest of statements. No complicated language, just light words with heavy implications. He writes, "No man knows how much he is an optimist, even when he calls himself a pessimist, because he has not really measured the depths of his debt to whatever created him and enabled him to call himself anything. At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy."

I am waiting for my wife to write on the book she read about humans being dependent rational animals. Because I think Chesterton struck gold when he realized the debt which we as individuals owe for our own existence. We did not bring about our own existence. How easily, in following Chesterton's quote, does that give us the greatest excitement to be alive. Perhaps only the grateful attitude gives way to the deepest joy. The deepest sense of appreciation for that which created us can restore the greatest joy to exist at all.

Optimists annoy me probably because I assume that they are being fake or have not endured enough hardship to think life is not rainbows and kittens. However, I believe Chesterton would argue that an "easy" life is not one void of bad things happening. Instead, it is of having never weighed the depths to which one is indebted to the other. When one is not cognizant of the appreciation that is owed, then it matters little what one accomplishes with his life. It leaves the door wide open to be disgusted and annoyed at every little thing that goes wrong.

Perhaps the height of the problem comes with the greatest tragedy of life - death. It is death that is allowed to creep into our belief as being the most unfair, unjust reality of our existence. To the unbeliever death is the expiration date of life, love, pleasure, and all else that goes with it.

C.S Lewis writes a great little piece in "The Worlds Last Night." He speaks of our Lord, weeping at the tomb of his friend. At first glance, what a confusing thing it is that the one who must have known he was to conquer death would find it a reasonable thing to cry at his friends passing when in just a few moments he would raise him from the dead. But perhaps this was one of the most human things Jesus did. Lewis writes, "Nothing will reconcile us to - well, its (death’s) unnaturalness. We know that we were not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder..." 

Anyone who has had to go through the death of a close friend or family member knows the grief, the feeling of pure injustice that such a person had to die. It is such an event that can rattle the greatest of men to their knees and begin to doubt the "good" that they held supreme. We must identify death's unnaturalness and be grateful to the one who has defeated death, the proclaimer and creator of life itself. Only then can we live as the most authentic of optimists and live as defiant joy personified, as Chesterton did and spoke of here, in his own words:


"I had often called myself an optimist to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world.The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home." 
-Orthodoxy, G.K Chesterton

Tim

Free Will and the Laws of Nature

Someone recently asked me what my thoughts are on free will.  Specifically, they wanted to know if free will is something that could set us apart from robots.  If we imagine that there is a very complicated robot capable of sensing and responding to inputs in much the same way that a human does, on what grounds can we say that we are different from that robot?  On an intuitive level, one might be inclined to argue that humans are qualitatively different from such a robot because humans have free will, whereas the robot does not.

Before I discuss this scenario I want to stop and ask why we even care about free will.  Why do so many of us think that free will is important and that if we found out that we didn’t have free will it would be a tragedy?  I think there are several categories of reasons.  First we have experiential reasons.  We experience the world as if we had free will.  We believe that we have options about what actions we are going to choose and we are aware of ourselves making conscious decisions to act one way or another.  We have the experience of willing actions that we don’t feel compelled to will.  We even will things that go against what our natural inclinations are.  While these aren’t necessarily arguments for free will, they do demonstrate why we think free will might be important.  If it turns out that we don’t have free will, then reality is very different from how we experience it.

The second category of reasons is moral.  Many people think free will is necessary for there to be moral goodness, moral badness and moral responsibility.  If people are not free to choose their actions, then how can we appropriately praise or blame them for anything they do?  Or how can we call any of their actions morally good?  We don’t praise the moral attributes of washing machines, and it seems reasonable to say that one reason for this is because washing machines don’t have free will.  Their actions are determined.  They either work or they don’t work, but we never hold them morally responsible for their actions either way.  And we don’t say that they are morally good when they do work and morally bad when they don’t.  Intuitively, it would seem that if humans do not have free will, then humans could not be held morally responsible either, and human actions could never be judged to be morally good or morally bad.

The third category of reasons is theological.  These are probably the first reasons that come to my mind when I think about free will.  I think a lot of this can be attributed to the explicitly Arminian Christian culture that I grew up in.  Free will was an essential part of my understanding of Christianity in my adolescence.  It provided an alternative to the unpalatable doctrines of Calvinism.  I especially wanted to avoid the doctrine of limited atonement (the doctrine that Christ died only for the elect).  Believing in free will also gave me a well established theodicy to draw on.  Why is there suffering in the world?  Because humans have free will and they make bad choices.  Why did God give us free will?  Because God didn’t want robots; God wanted people who could make morally substantive choices and who could choose to love God back.  It all fits together nicely.

Given these intuitive reasons for believing in and caring about free will, one might wonder why anyone would doubt that humans have free will.  Nevertheless, many people do doubt it.  There are two major theses in particular that, if accepted, combine to make a powerful case for either the non-existence of free will or the incoherence of the idea of free will.  The first thesis is causal determinism and the second is incompatibilism.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Free Will defines causal determinism as “the thesis that the course of the future is entirely determined by the conjunction of the past and the laws of nature.”  On this view, given a set of starting conditions, all future events can be comprehensively explained as the necessary consequences of natural laws being played out.  Think of the game Angry Birds.  In the world of Angry Birds there are “laws of nature,” the rules of the game that dictate how everything in the world of Angry Birds interacts.  Someone sat down and wrote out equations that determine how much force is necessary to kill pigs of different sizes, or to break through different types of barriers, etc.  These rules mimic laws that we find in nature.  For each level of Angry Birds you are also given a set of initial conditions (i.e. the arrangement of pigs and other objects on the level).  The only initial conditions that you have control over (ignoring some of the mid-flight capabilities for the moment) are the angle and velocity with which you release your birds from the slingshot.  All the events that occur after you release a bird are completely determined by the combination of the initial conditions and the “laws of nature” that govern the game.  Nothing else comes into play.  Analogously, given a set of initial conditions in the real world, causal determinism claims that the laws of nature will dictate all future events.

It doesn’t follow from causal determinism that free will does not or cannot exist.  First one has to accept an intermediate thesis known as incompatibilism.  Incompatibilism simply claims that free will is not compatible with causal determinism.  That may seem trivial, but it is a point of a lot of debate.  Some philosophers think that even if causal determinism is true that free will would still be possible.  These people are called compatibilists.  I’m not going to present arguments for compatibilism versus incompatibilism.  I’m only going to point out that there is not a general consensus on the matter within the philosophical community.  For the purposes of this blog post I’m going to assume that most of my (three) readers are incompatibilists (i.e. they believe that determinism is incompatible with free will) and move on to a discussion of the laws of nature as it relates to determinism.

For a long time it looked to me like causal determinism might be an unavoidable conclusion (pardon my bad sense of humor).  For someone who takes mathematical, physical, chemical and biological laws seriously, it’s hard to see where there is any space for free will.  For example, where does free will show up in the chemical processes that govern my brain?  I know that there is a continuous chain of chemical events that takes place in my brain every time that I perform an action.  I also know that if someone were to analyze these chains of events they would be able to explain them completely in terms of the laws of nature acting on a set of initial conditions.  They wouldn’t need to introduce the idea of a non-physical will in order to explain what was going on.  It would be entirely superfluous and undesirable.

This perplexed me for many years until I discovered a new way of thinking about the laws of nature.  There are two major philosophical camps when it comes to conceptions of the laws of nature.  One camp claims that the laws of nature are physically necessary in some way, and that they are prescriptive or “pushy,” as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Causal Determinism puts it.  In other words, the laws of nature don’t simply describe what we observe in the physical world, they actually make the physical world behave in the way that it does; they cause events.  This is the camp of the necessitarians.  Those in the alternative camp are called regularists.

According to the regularity position, the laws of nature are not pushy explanations; they are merely correct descriptions of generalized regularities that we observe in nature.  The laws of nature do not govern the universe, dictating the path that every particle must follow and imposing order on the physical world.  They do not cause events, as if abstract, non-physical laws were even capable of that.  Rather, events are caused by things in the world and the laws of nature are summaries of the regularities that we have observed in these things.

This latter view is the one that I take and it turns out that under this view, the problem of free will versus determinism basically disappears.  If the laws of nature are not pushy, if they are not physically necessary, if they are not the cause of events, then causal determinism loses a lot of its plausibility.  Moreover, if the laws of nature are simply descriptions of the regularities in the world, then there is plenty of space for free will.  The laws of nature do not dictate our actions.  Instead, the laws of nature depend on what we choose.

Now I realized that last statement seems like it ignores certain solid and unchosen characteristics of the physical world.  For example, our choices do not affect the law of gravity.  It remains the same whether we like it or not.  But I think this can be accounted for if we distinguish between the causal powers of animate and inanimate objects.  Electrons, for example, have causal powers of attraction and repulsion of other electrically charged particles.  Rocks have gravitational powers and properties like hardness.  And all physical objects have various properties that cause them to interact with other objects in predictable ways.  As a result of these causal powers, we notice patterns of interaction and regularities.  It’s my view that if the world were limited to inanimate objects that it would be entirely deterministic (excepting quantum-level phenomena which I won’t discuss here), because a rock cannot chose to act in one way rather than another.  Its behavior is determined by its non-volitional causal powers and properties interacting with the objects around it.

Animals and humans, on the other hand, have wills.  They are volitional beings, able to choose one action over another.  If all beings were volitional, then the laws of nature could end up being very chaotic.  For example, if every electron could choose what its electrical charge would be, who knows what would happen to the fabric of the universe.  Higher-order beings probably could not exist in such an environment.  So the stability provided by lower-order, non-volitional beings create a context in which higher-order, volitional beings can move and interact.  And while deterministic laws of nature may arise from non-volitional beings, that does not mean that the universe is governed by deterministic laws.  The laws of nature that arise from higher-order beings are anything but deterministic.  Just look at the hard physical sciences versus the biological or social sciences.

Let me try to bring this back around to the opening question.  Is free will something that could separate us from robots?  My first instinct is to say “yes” because I think humans are capable of true volition whereas robots are only capable of mimicking volitional behavior.  However, that’s a meaty metaphysical claim and I would probably have to get into discussions of consciousness, philosophy of language, and phenomenology in order to address it.  I can’t do that here, but I’ll just hint at some trains of thought that might be worth further investigation.  The first thought is that if one believes in some form of mind/body dualism, then one could argue that humans are different from robots because humans have minds.  The second thought is that humans are language users and, as such, are capable of reflective thought.  That is something unique to humans that seems to be qualitatively different from animal communication.  One could argue that this ability also sets us apart from robots.  The third thought (which may be related to the first two) is that it might be incoherent to talk about a robot making a choice between different courses of action because robots do not have a thought world.  One could argue on phenomenological grounds that it is appropriate to say that humans make choices about courses of actions, whereas all we can appropriately say about robots is that they execute the software written for them.



-David