letter to an honest atheist

Dear Friend,

I apologize for not having written earlier. I have no legitimate excuses. I will admit, I have at times been angry, intimidated and more often than that, fearful of the hatred I expected you to have for me. I understand we come from two sides of a spectrum that have long argued with unmatched emotion and with the sharpest of words. I ask that we put down our petty tricks and shelve our playground finger pointing. More seriously, I hope we can stop with the accusations of the destruction on account of both of our worldviews. I thank you for your willingness to converse with me, opting out of the typical tactics of emotional manipulation or creative word play. It is so easy to judge a world view by its abuse but let us work hard to not let this be said of us.

However, let us also recognize the mutually exclusive foundation of each of our claims. Either there is a God(s) or there is not. I am not aware of a third position. Therefore, let us grant ourselves our prejudice in this area while we also readily admit together that any prejudice influences our perception. One may ask what grounds remain to argue from or to what purpose is further discussion, to which we both shall respond that we are seekers of truth. Wouldn't we want to speak to those that claim to harbor any truths about humanity and our existence? Doesn't an investigator thoroughly interrogate all the eye witnesses to the same event?

My friend David wrote last week, "We must develop the competence and honesty to evaluate our beliefs and judge what we know. The second step is to be honest in communicating our knowledge. If we follow these steps our trustworthiness will nurture an atmosphere in which truth may readily be found." My friend, this is my only wish for this letter to you.

I must begin by saying I have always admired you. I admire your search for certainty. Even further, I admire your desire for rational certainty and a determination to work with our tools of objectivity in logic, science and even mathematics. There is no doubting the contributions your atheist friends have had in these areas. There are unquestionably brilliant minds amidst your camp; my favorites are probably Nietzsche and Sartre. Even more than your approach to seeking truth, I admire your skepticism of beliefs based seemingly on emotional or experiential frothiness.

I empathize with your denial of God. I honestly share that I don't know of many serious believers who haven't dealt with severe doubts during some time in their lives. I can speak from my own experience of going through so many times of doubting God's actual existence, providential design or ultimately, his control in my life. Sadly, more often than not, these doubts were instigated by my disbelief in another believer's experience rather than any internal questions I had. Here I find no greater point of empathy with your view than in your frustration with persons claiming to have experienced miracles, for my experience has not contained any kind of biblical proportioned instances of divine intervention. Instead, if I were to explain where I believe I have seen God guide or direct the path of my life, you would ask me to grab a dictionary and look up the words "irony" and "coincidence."

A friend of mine used to say, "if you have thought a major religion foolish than you have not understood it." I want to thank you for not having kicked all of your Christian friends to the curb and I respect your unwillingness to join the likes of Sam Harris or Bill Maher, who speak of seeking truth but have no apparent respect for those that do not agree with them. I also want to apologize for those in my camp who have not taken your position seriously, especially your questions asking for proof. I wanted to apologize for last year when I merely sent you a lecture to listen to and expected it to change your mind in the 15 minutes of its duration. I have done you a disservice by not meeting with you honestly and by not responding with substance void of dogma or cliches like "if you just believed then you will see".

My friend, it is my desire to be able to share only objective truths with you as a means of providing a pathway to rational certainty that there is a God and moreover, rational certainty of the Christian God. However, you and I both know I will fall short of such a goal. Instead, what I hope you allow me the time to do is share my experience in hopes of striking a note that will ring harmoniously with something in your own experience. 

First, I would like to address the view that faith in God is but a convenience or wishful thinking or "the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence," as Hitchens put it. This has with it an assumption of ease and lack of reasoning. If faith in God is reduced to a mercenaries ticket to Heaven or an excuse to judge others on wrongdoings, I would agree with Hitchens. But if faith in God instead leads us to pursue truth, to discover the goodness that lies at the core of existence and to do my best to implement those findings into the daily action of my life, I have found no more difficult task.

As Lewis writes "only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is." Why, I would argue that my life, in some ways, is getting more and more challenging rather than the reverse. For the deepest truths I have discovered in my life have been revealed from my experiencing the deepest joys and the deepest miseries. Both of those experiences are hinting that I should give up more and more of myself. I think of a basic example of a son becoming an older brother, then a husband, then a father. Each step requires more of a sacrifice than the previous step. It is a path of progressive purification. My experience has been littered with examples of the deep truth that sits at this seemingly preposterous itch of sacrificial love, a deep conviction to be consumed by humility and service. On the flip side, I know that the greatest misery in my life has come when I have acted in direct opposition to these foundational truths and done something self-seeking that ended up cheating myself or someone else. This is why I believe, like Chesterton, that "The difficulty with Christianity is not that it has been tried and left wanting, but it has been found difficult and left untried."

I mentioned earlier about the lack of monumental instances of divine intervention in my life. I want to clarify that a bit for you. God has not held the sun from setting or spoken to me through a burning bush. However, my life has contained a series of what you call coincidences, continually guiding me to the same path of humility, sacrifice, and love. As much as I can, I would like to live according to these truths that I have found more meaningful than doing something for myself. My reasoning here is based on the continual revelation that what was discovered as a deeper truth once will be discovered as a deeper truth once more. This is the same reasoning you use with scientific observations when you expect matter to behave the same way when under the same conditions. When I am able to respond within the framework of these truths, the contentment I feel overwhelms me to the point of certainty for a loving God, albeit not rational certainty but experientially reasonable belief. Additionally, when I have experienced these so called coincidences it gives me my deepest feeling of honor that I am a part of the ultimate purpose. Why, if there is a God, there would be no greater purpose than in serving him, right?

My friend, I know the questions of origin are frustrating. I know this has historically been an intense point of contention in our feud. Bottom line: I wasn't there and you weren't there. Friend, this is probably a familiar argument but questions of origin around what and why seem to have greater importance than how and when. For example, isn't the reason for a phone call more important than how I dialed the numbers and when I made the call? The why gives you the understanding in order to properly respond. I grant you that I am making a large assumption that you would want to find meaning in the origin of the universe. I guess I am making this assumption based on your devotion and diligence to find the truth (even if it is just to prove us theists wrong). Let's not deny it. Origin has deep implications for us both.

Lewis makes the observation, "Reason might conceivably be found to depend on another reason and so on; it would not matter how far this process was carried provided you found reason coming from reason at each stage. It is only when you are asked to believe in reason coming from non-reason that you must cry halt." Or as my friend Ravi says, "Nothing in this physical universe can explain its own existence. Something does not come from nothing. Therefore, in order for there to be something (and there is) there must be at least one state that is self-existent and does not derive its existence from something else." So if this logic is sound, at the origin of all things, we must firmly believe that there is something containing the capabilities of all things, from the reality of infinity purposed to us by math, to the intelligence of humans to discover such a truth, to even the non-material existence of things like energy and light, and the decision and creative capabilities of the human mind. Aren't we left with a potentially infinite, non-material, intelligent, creative and conscience thing? I grant you this paragraph will demand further discussion and I look forward to it.

My friend, I want to continue with our love for reasoning. Do you believe there are limitations to reasoning? Even if it means the limitation is a result of things we simply can not know? I'm sure you can guess from what I have said previously, that I do. "All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of single fly". Won't there always be more to discover? Not only as to the what of science but the how and the why? Are we not limited by the sheer magnitude of what we can still know and possibly what we never will? My point is that there are things beyond our understanding. This doesn't mean such things don't still exist or impact our lives, right? We still drank water before we knew it was two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. And if God is the infinite creator of all things left to be discovered, would he not be the last thing we come to fully understand, if our minds are even capable of such a thing, since he is the least derivative? Perhaps this point is best suited for people in my camp who believe they have figured this whole God thing out, and then for you.

We often complain that if there is a God, why is there so much suffering in the world? Let us not forget the truth, "You can not be mad at God and not believe in him at the same time." I want to end with a rather simple example of what I'm trying to say. The Truman show (if you haven't seen it) is a film about a creator of a television show in which an unknowing individual is living in the midst of a created society. The film ends with the profoundest of statements about humanity. After coming to an understanding that his environment was artificial, the main protagonist is faced with the option of remaining in the safe protection of the creator vs. exiting the set into the dangerous and unknown real world. Our hero elects his freedom over safety.

My friend, this is where the paradigm of the Christian God shines brightest. The Christian God is a protector but he is also a loving God. What is the most difficult and most important aspect of parenting? Establishing a balance of freedom and safety as to foster an atmosphere of maturity in all areas. And like any child who finally identifies and appreciates the background work of his parents in these two areas, their freedom allows for the decision of obedience as the most reasonable thing. You see, I agree with Ravi when he said, "God has put enough in this world to make faith in him a most reasonable thing. But he has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone." I have found the Christian paradigm and diagnosis of what is wrong with the world and also what is right about it to be revolutionary in every part of my existence. A diagnosis of a broken world that is determined to seek for truth and comfort in everything. A world that seeks to find its remedy for an intentional rebellion from a loving creator, who gave us the freeing option to rebel in the first place and yet provided the potential for reconciliation and ultimate redemption of a creation back to its creator.  That redemption grounded on the intrinsic truths of sacrificial love and service, the ultimate design and fulfillment of our decision making abilities.

Please understand I speak to you not as an older brother trying to convince and conquer you as another point to add on a scoreboard of souls, but instead as a younger brother who humbly yearns for my older brother to reconcile himself with our father.

Your Friend,

Tim

On Trust and Truth

I’ve been thinking about the concept of trust lately. It started the other day when I was expressing my general cynicism about politics. I think the most frustrating thing about politics for me is that the whole enterprise of campaign politics and public relations management seems designed to impede the transmission of truth. The goal of a campaign isn’t to disclose the truth about a candidate but to project a carefully constructed image that will appeal to some targeted segment of the public. Because of this, I feel like I can’t trust anything that I hear when it comes to politics and that disturbs and frustrates me.

My response to this frustration has been to reflect on the nature of trust and the role that trust plays in the formation of our beliefs and the transmission of knowledge. In this post I want to examine a series of questions. First, what is trust? What does it mean to say that we trust someone and what does it mean for us to say that someone is trustworthy? Second, why and how does trust play a role in our day-to-day formation of beliefs? Third, how is knowledge based on trust different from knowledge that is not based on trust? Through the exploration of these questions I hope to demonstrate the significance and importance of trust and trustworthiness as it relates to the search for truth.

What is trust?
There are different ways that trust could be characterized and different contexts in which it might take on slightly different meanings. For instance, it might mean one thing for you to trust your friend, another for you to trust yourself, and another for you to trust your church. Despite these varied contexts, there are still some commonalities among all these usages of trust and the concept of interpersonal trust seems to be the most foundational. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on trust says: “Although some philosophers write about trust that is not interpersonal… most would agree that these forms of “trust” are coherent only if they share important features of (i.e. can be modeled on) interpersonal trust. Hence, I assume that the dominant paradigm is interpersonal.”  The article then goes on to present a working definition of trust and trustworthiness. I will paraphrase the key components of that definition here and then move on to my own analysis in the following sections.  (The full encyclopedia article is here.)

When we trust another person we are doing at least two important things. First, we are making ourselves vulnerable. We are entrusting something to another person and counting on them to act in a particular way. This puts us at risk of disappointment, betrayal, and the loss of what we entrust to them. Second, because of the risk involved, trust requires an attitude of optimism about a person’s trustworthiness. We have to believe that the person we trust is both competent and committed to act in the way that we hope they will act. We have to believe that they are trustworthy.

Because trust requires vulnerability and optimism about another person, it is both an action and an attitude. Trustworthiness, on the other hand, is a property that stands independently of anyone’s attitudes or beliefs about it. (There are philosophers who argue that trustworthiness is a virtue, but I won’t get into the distinction between a property and a virtue at this time. For the purposes of this post, they are the same thing.) If a person possesses trustworthiness in a particular instance, then they are in fact competent and committed to act in the way we hope that they will act. This is true regardless of whether or not we decide to trust them. We might mistakenly judge a trustworthy person to be untrustworthy and, therefore, decide not to trust them, and vice versa.

Why and how does trust play a role in our day-to-day formation of beliefs?
Every time we take someone’s word for something, we form a belief on the basis of trust. We do this all the time when we form an opinion based on a news story; when we go to the doctor for a diagnosis and follow the doctor’s recommendation; when we look at the weather forecast and plan our day around it; when we ask our biologist friend to identify a tree for us; when we consult Wikipedia for a quick answer to a question we have. In all of these instances our beliefs are a product of trust.

The reason that we engage in this kind of activity is that there are constraints on what we can know as individuals. These constraints could be internal to us. For instance, some people are not (and perhaps never could be) competent enough to investigate the truth claims made by nuclear physicists, mathematicians, and doctors. Even if we were theoretically capable, we might still be constrained externally by resources and time. A person who is suffering from a life-threatening respiratory condition doesn’t have time to go to medical school in order to find out for herself exactly what her ailment is and how to treat it. She needs an answer fast and she can't supply it on her own, so she goes to see a doctor. Sometimes we are constrained by geographical location, as in the case of world events. We count on news agencies to bring us stories from the other side of the globe. These examples illustrate that when we want to know more than our constraints allow us to know on our own, then we have to trust outside sources if we are going to make any progress in knowledge.

Our working definition of trust states that it involves vulnerability and optimism about another’s trustworthiness. In the case of trusting an outside source of knowledge we should be able to say both how the person who trusts is vulnerable and also what it is that makes a source trustworthy. The vulnerability seems to be deception or misinformation. When we trust an outside source we risk acquiring a false belief. Because of this risk, there are at least two major characteristics that make a source of knowledge trustworthy. First (if we assume that the source is a person) the source should be competent enough to judge when he knows something or not. If a person thinks he knows something when he really doesn't, then he will only lead us astray if we trust him. Secondly, the source needs to be honest about what they know. If a person is in the habit of lying to us, then we can't count on what he tells us to be true.

How is knowledge based on trust different from knowledge that is not based on trust?
In the field of epistemology (the study of knowledge) knowledge is minimally defined as true justified belief. In other words, to know something means that you hold a belief about it, that this belief is in fact true, and that you have some justification for holding this belief. (Each of these components is the subject of debate and the definition is not quite adequate as it is, but it's a good starting point.)

With this definition in mind, I want to make a distinction between what I will call first-hand and second-hand knowledge. Intuitively, first-hand knowledge is knowledge that is known without needing to trust an outside source. Everyone has first-hand knowledge about their own life. For example, I know that I exists, I know where I live, I know where I go to work, I know that I like ice cream, etc. I don't need to take anyone's word for it. I can supply my own justification for these beliefs. When it comes to things like my beliefs about other people, however, then my knowledge is second-hand. When my friend tells me that they work for Company X that is located in Town Y, I take their word for it. Now of course, I could go to the trouble of secretly following them to work in the morning and observing whether or not they go to Town Y and do in fact work at Company X. Then my second-hand knowledge would become first-hand. But we simply can't achieve first-hand knowledge of everything that we might want to know because of the constraints mentioned earlier. So we count on second-hand knowledge where it isn't possible or practical or desirable to acquire first-hand knowledge.

The defining difference between first-hand and second-hand knowledge is the way in which beliefs are justified. First-hand knowledge is justified directly, as it were. My justification for believing that I rent a house is that I have a lease filed in my desk with my and my landlord's signature on it, I have been occupying the house described in the lease for over a year, and I pay rent to my landlord every month. I don't have to take anyone's word for it that I rent a house. In the same way, physicists have first-hand knowledge of the laws of physics. Their belief that E=mc^2 is justified on the basis of experiments and observations that they are able to understand and access because of their training. For the majority of us, however, our belief that E=mc^2 will always remain an article of second-hand knowledge that is justified indirectly through trust. We do not fully understand the justification given in support of the equation for ourselves. At some level we have to trust the physicists who claim that they have first-hand knowledge.

First-hand knowledge is a consequence of understanding, whereas second-hand knowledge is a consequence of trust. Therefore, the trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of our sources of knowledge greatly affects our ability to search for truth beyond our constraints. When the sources available to us are not trustworthy, the scope of what we can know is radically diminished or, equivalently, our search for truth will be fruitless beyond what we can know first-hand. By the same token, when the sources available to us are trustworthy, our search for truth will flourish and the scope of what we can know will be greatly extended into matters that we would otherwise know nothing about.

The trustworthiness of other people is not something that we can control. We do, however, have control over whether or not we will be trustworthy sources of knowledge. The first step in becoming trustworthy is making sure that we do not claim either more (or, I suppose, less) knowledge than we actually possess. We must develop the competence and honesty to evaluate our beliefs and judge what we know. The second step is to be honest in communicating our knowledge. If we follow these steps our trustworthiness will nurture an atmosphere in which truth may readily be found.

-David

The End of Self-Indulgence

I don’t like starting a piece of writing with a disclaimer but I think this post deserves one. My topic is one which I should have used for a final paper in a literature or art class. But alas, I don’t have that opportunity, while the opportunity and duty to blog sits right in front of me. So I will endeavor to cover much more ground than I probably should and make many claims that are based on less research than they should be. But all of it flows from a few stories and ideas that have captured my imagination and I hope they will capture yours as well. The stories are those of four men, two real and two fictional, whose lives share a common trajectory and are interestingly intertwined.

I was first introduced to Oscar Wilde about 6 years ago in a literature class. His 1891 novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a fascinating story in many respects. It follows a beautiful young man named Dorian Gray, who is having his portrait painted. One day, vain Dorian wistfully remarks that he wishes the portrait would bear the signs of aging and that his youthful good looks would always stay the same, rather than the other way around. Of course, his wish comes true. The remainder of the book chronicles Dorian’s life experiences and how the painting, which he has hidden deep inside his house, is altered by them. In effect, the painting becomes an image of the state of Dorian’s soul.

At one point in the story, Dorian’s friend Lord Henry sends him a book. Dorian describes it as “a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own... The life of the senses was described in terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. … For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of the book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it.”

This poisonous French novel, Wilde acknowledged, was a “fantastic variation” of Joris-Karl Huysmans’ 1884 novel “Against the Grain”. The main character of Huysmans’ book, Jean Des Esseintes, had lived an extremely decadent life in Paris but became disgusted with it. He decided to retreat to a house in the countryside and spend the rest of his life in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation. His experiments are bizarre and varied, including a famous scene where he sets gemstones in the shell of a tortoise, who subsequently dies from the extra weight on its back.

Eventually, Des Esseintes’ isolated and self-centered life renders him so ill that his doctor insists he must choose between returning to Paris or dying there alone. “Des Esseintes dropped into a chair, in despair. ‘In two days more I shall be in Paris,’ he exclaimed; ‘well, all is over;…Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! –Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the sceptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts out to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling of the ancient hope.” Thus, Des Esseintes experiment in fulfilling his every whim ended not with satisfaction but with intense despair.

A similar pattern occurs in Dorian Gray’s life, as he follows the example set forth in this book. He begins to delight and indulge in every sort of pleasure and endeavors to uncover a “new spirituality”, characterized by the “spiritualizing of the senses” and the development of a “fine instinct for beauty”. “Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.” And so Dorian devotes himself to perfumes, music, fashion, jewels, tapestries, and embroideries, becoming completely obsessed with each one by turn.

Dorian’s pursuit of the sensual and exciting also leads him into the dark sins of lust and greed, which spawn out into lying, deceit and even murder. While Dorian continues to appear as an innocent young man, the portrait portraying the effect on his soul grows uglier and more terrible by the day. Dorian attempts to do just one good and selfless deed to save his soul, only to discover that he had done it out of vanity. He laments to himself, “Ah! In what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendor of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure, swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment. Not ‘Forgive us our sins’ but ‘Smite us for our iniquities,’ should be the prayer of man to a most just God.”

Both of these novels strikingly display how despair and hopelessness follow directly from self-indulgence. The honesty in these accounts comes in part from the fact that both Wilde and Huysmans experienced this despair, even if they didn’t immediately realize or admit it. While the stories of Jean Des Esseintes and Dorian Gray end in complete hopelessness, the stories of the authors do not finish at the same point.

Oscar Wilde was a successful journalist, writer and popular playwright, who enjoyed being part of the fashionable cultural and social circles in London. He is also remembered as a persecuted homosexual, who was jailed for his affair with a younger man. Convicted of sodomy and forced to work two years of hard labor at Reading Gaol, Wilde spent his free time reading and writing, striving to find meaning in the suffering he endured. His thoughts at the time are revealed in this excerpt of “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, which he wrote while in prison.

“Ah! Happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?”

Once released from prison, Wilde immediately applied for a six-month Jesuit retreat but was denied. When he heard the news about his denial, he wept. Just three years later, on his deathbed and accompanied by a priest and his good Catholic friend Robbie Ross, Wilde was received into the Catholic church.

Huysmans’ conversion was equally long and drawn out, as he writes so eloquently in the preface to the 1903 rerelease of Against the Grain. “ There was no doubt at the date when I was writing ‘Against the Grain,’ a shifting of the soil, a delving of the earth, to lay the foundations, of which I was all unconscious. God was digging to lay His wire, and he was at work only in the darkness of the soul, in the night. Nothing was visible on the surface; it was only years after that the spark began to run along the wires. Then I could feel my soul stirred by the shock; as yet it was neither very painful nor very distinct. The Church offices, mysticism, art were the vehicles and the means; it occurred mostly in churches…where I used to go out of curiosity, for lack of other things to do. I experienced as I watched the services only an inward tremor, the little shiver one feels on seeing, hearing or reading a fine work of art; but there was no definite movement, no positive impulse to come to a decision.”

He continues, “Only, little by little, I was shaking myself loose from my shell of impurity; I was beginning to have a disgust of myself, but at the same time I kicked against the articles of the Faith. The objections I raised in my own mind seemed irresistible; and lo! one fine morning when I woke they were solved,--I never knew how. I prayed for the first time, and the catastrophe was over.”

Huysmans credits only one man with truly seeing and understanding his spiritual predicament upon reading Against the Grain. In an 1884 review of the book, Barbey d’Aurevilly, who had no acquaintance with Huysmans, wrote, “After such a book, it only remains for the author to choose between the muzzle of a pistol or the foot of the cross.”

Almost ten years later, Huysmans replied simply, “The choice has been made.”

By Ruth

Floating Dandelions: Falling in Love with God & Man

As a Christian from nearly conception, I probably should have found my way into C.S Lewis' Screwtape Letters prior to a couple weeks ago. My only excuse is that I have been around so many different people who have read it, I felt as though I already had. The concept of two demons corresponding in hopes of influencing humans towards “our father below” seemed like an entertaining premise but perhaps more honestly my despise for popular Christian books left me deliberately unmotivated...but I got over it finally and read it.

As you may have guessed (for those who have read it) I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Lewis is both creative and insightful. He explains the struggles of human nature (see Romans 7:15), utilizing the amusingly honest dealings between a demon and a j.v demon who are plotting to capture souls. While most of the letters had some pretty savvy discussion of truth (written of course in the negative), the letters pertaining to new believers are what I found most interesting. Perhaps I have been reading a bit too much Kierkegaard and his cynicism is rubbing off on me but I nearly agreed with the older (wiser?) demon as he detailed to the J.V demon how best to deal with this new believer. It sounded as if he was speaking of a school boy on the verge of entering into a relationship with his idolized crush. What is this overflow of emotion and depth of excitement that this new believer feels? This ridiculously glowing outlook on their relation to God and perhaps an even more annoying giddiness about their future?

Last week, I was listening to a Christian radio station program describe this feeling or the high of falling in love. The speaker made the case for this high as a form of self-love. Since I would like to find any reason to persecute those in a romantic form of this lovers high, I didn't change the station. Of course, I wanted some ammunition for these floating dandelions (obviously forgetting that I am often one of these poor saps). The speaker went on to describe the rush that occurs when new love interests finally hold hands as they walk. He described the flush of emotion as being primarily about the affirmation and excitement that someone loves them. Mostly, it validates the individual. It reassures the person that they are worthy of the other and affirms what the individual wanted to believe all along but was unable to impart on themselves - that he or she matters. As the speaker continued he began describing what true love was and how it differed entirely from this self-love high which we attribute to love. The speaker went as far as saying that we should disregard this first feeling as love at all. As he continued, I found myself starting to disagree more and more with him. Wasn't this initial overflow of emotion and excitement part of God's design?

I would have to agree that a case can be made quite easily that we live in a culture that craves, if not worships, this falling in love high. With our romantic relationships, we tend to remain under the delusion that if we don't always feel that thrill of validation that we had the first time we kissed or held hands than it is not true love. We often expect this from our relationship to God as well. If we are not maintaining our initial amazement with what our God has done for us as when we first came to faith than our faith must be lacking. Or as Lewis writes, we come to the dangerously false proposition that "I am losing interest in this, therefore, this must be false".

I agree wholly that it can be an addictive rut we get stuck in by pursuing the next relationship or object that will return our elation to the proper height, but those willing to seek those addictions to their end and ultimately circular pattern, arrive at the conclusion that this high is limited. It is not sustainable. The lie is that it is sustainable; but it is also a lie that it serves no significant purpose. Lewis in one of his other works notes, "It's the first falling in love that moves lovers to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this that the engine of marriage is run: falling in love was the explosion that started it".

Clearly, Lewis is talking of a romantic relationship here, but how does it relate to our relationship with God? Can't this high, albeit spiritual, spur us to similar action, commitment and duty? The danger comes in believing this high will last forever so we don't bother with action, commitment and duty. Take it from the varsity demon, "Let him assume that the first ardours of his conversion might have been expected to last, and ought to have lasted, forever, and that his present dryness is an equally permanent condition". We may also believe this high is strictly of the sinful self and "begin to doubt whether the first days of his Christian conversion were not, perhaps, a little excessive". Both cases seem to arrive at a form of spiritual death. The former produces a being starved for the next high that will satisfy "an ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure". The latter results in psychosis of automata. We deny ourselves the passion of this first love and root ourselves only in a commitment. Duty becomes our purpose solely and the relationship ceases to be relational in any form. 

Perhaps, like most things in life, it requires a balance of the two. But as we all know, the balanced life is a difficult one. This week I listened to an old message by Ravi Zacharias, a brilliant teacher, on his radio show Let My People Think. He discussed the problem of pleasure. Obviously, the problem of pain has been well documented among doubters of the faith. Mr. Lewis devotes countless essays and lectures to the issue of pain and how it can challenge belief in a just God. However, Ravi points out that the "meaninglessness is most found not in those experiencing the depths of pain, but instead those that have experienced the heights of pleasure." Ravi uses countless examples of people who found nothing at the height of their success and pleasure. With King Solomon as his leading example, Ravi loosely quotes G.K. Chesteron in saying, "meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure, not pain”. Ravi goes on to point out that true pleasure (meaning authentic pleasure designed by God) usually involves pain first and then pleasure or joy later. It is false pleasure (or distorted, tainted pleasure) that takes the pattern of pleasure first and pain later.

OK, where am I going with this? Or as we use to beg of my Dad when he preached, "Land the plane, Dad." This falling in love high, in its truest and purest form, is a hope and excitement of pleasure to come that is so great that it is willing to endure any sort of pain, service, duty or commitment. It is this first high that sparks the engine of death to ourselves as a way of bringing new life. As often as this cycle can be carried out, I believe it must, both in our relationships with loved ones and our relationship with God. Continuously seeking to fathom the Lord's love for us should result in the thrill of validation. This validation, in turn, gives rise to an unquenchable hope, as a giddy bride of Christ, which no less will spark our engine of selflessness as the reality of true pleasure is revealed. The more times we journey through this pattern of death to ourselves and resurrection to new life and ultimate purpose in Christ, the more we are able to experience the reality of the eternity that is awaiting us. I continue to find myself amazed at how the reality of our world is drenched with death and resurrection. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised since, as Lewis writes in Miracles, "Death and resurrection are what the story is about; and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us in some disguise, at every turn and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters as the vegetables".

P.S "Engine of Death" - David, new band name?

Tim