VII. Where the Compass Spins

There are times when through confusion, temptation, or weakness, the mind cannot with any sureness detect the reasonable truth of God. It may be moral, as when temptation befuddles the mind and makes the body want one thing though the Spirit does not want that thing. Under the stress of immediate temptation, the mind cannot get traction to think through the problem without the emotions holding an infinite sway against its inner discourse. One should try thinking oneself out of a fit of anger, not from irritation, but from actual moral wrong committed by another against oneself. Does the operation of the mind in this moment suffice to cool the desire for local justice in the body? The mind knows information that should stop the anger (forgive others as God in Christ has forgiven you). But the wheels spin when the mind tries to climb that hill, and it gets no traction over the passions. Does greed ever stop gnawing at a person when they realize the rich are the most miserable people on the planet? The mind knows money does not equal happiness. But there is an affectional pull towards material wealth as an emotional answer even if it is not a logical answer to ultimate happiness. In another case, sometimes the logical proofs of God's existence are clear to the rational center of one's brain, but circumstances, despair, and incongruousness in perceived justice or fairness make one doubtful or scared that there is no god.
Why does the compass spin during this instance? Why does the feeble mind give up his ghost so easily when the emotions begin to tug at his hem? What would allow us to restore a sense of direction to the mind during temptation? What would allow us to feel where God is, when we can't feel God within? The compass spins for a reason, one cannot tell North when the arrow is always stuck in one direction. By having a spinning compass we gain malleability in our lives, but we also gain mutability. There are times we decipher the pulls and tugs of forces outside of us for the true way, yet we end up east or west of our mark. Yet the compass does not always spin amiss. By wandering, sometimes we find the lost path. And even on the wrong path, the compass eventually turns back northward.

VI. The Fury

Sin is always a liar first. It was in the beginning when it whispered, "Did God really say...?" It has to be a liar. Sin cannot look reasonable at first glance.

"Eat the fruit and die？ Do I really want that?"

"Of course you do, you won't die, in fact you'll be god."

"I'd like that very much...perhaps I do like apples."

And so the first defense, the unreasonableness of sin, is disarmed by a lie. Seems so cold, inglorious, and passionless. Why give into the deathlike embrace of foolishness, unless she has made herself seem reasonable? Sometimes, however, the reasonable appeal of sin is not needed. There are times that the fury besets you.

There are times sin asks One to make bread from stones. This is reasonable, a hungry man must eat. Why not make some bread? Then there are times sin asks God himself to bow to the enemy and worship a lie. Sin is not even pretending to be reasonable at this time. Sin has become the fury. The vile, serpent-like, slithering vomitous appeal of self unto self: give me my due in this matter whatever the consequences!

The fury makes Samson nap like a baby on Delilah's lap. The fury makes David a murderer and adulterer. It sends kings to burn incense in place of priests. It covets vineyards unto murder. It belches lies and false statements against God's servants. And it doesn't even pretend to be reasonable, it just is desireful. Under the fury, I act in no other way except in that way which attains the goal I want. Self becomes god under this movement of the soul, and no other coronation than that desire which self wants becomes the glory of the universe. Great things contract into shriveled prunes of value, and the small moldy crumbs of addiction become sumptuous morsels that we must scrape up and gum on in a vile attempt to feast. God help us against the fury.

V. Bluffing

"Go, call your husband, and come here." John 4:16
The absurdities of the commandment evade us unless careful examination is taken. "Go." But didn't this woman just ask to get living water? Shouldn't she come rather than go in order to drink this water? "Go." The exact opposite of how you or I would deal with this woman. The exact opposite of what we'd expect to hear ourselves. Of course, Jesus would tell me to "come and drink", not to "go" in order to drink. Wouldn't he? How vexing: "go!"

And then the irony, "call your husband". Well of course this woman hasn't a husband, for we know the end of the story. So she has to go and call her husband to get this water? What an impossible command! You cannot tell someone to do something they cannot do upon condition of getting something they want and expect success in the venture. Jesus tries this route, however, and succeeds wherein we would fail. You want living water? Come face to face with your biggest failures. Embrace your inability to meet the conditions to drink, woman! This seems even worse than the command to "go".

And then the last step, "come here." At least she'd not be cast off forever, she could come back upon condition of bringing her non-existent (or pent-existent) husband(s). Oh the indignity she would face upon fulfilling this commandment. What if she came back with five husbands in her train, and another man, in fulfillment of the Lord's command? Would he then reward her with living water? Does he want the letter of the law fulfilled in this case? All that is meaningless speculation, because Jesus is bluffing. That's right, it's a ruse. There will be no going, calling, and returning in the bare sense of the words. Because Jesus isn't looking for moral fiber and commitment from the woman. You don't tune a broken harp. Jesus is bluffing.

What is the point of this bluff? It seems cruel to dangle out a carrot to so sad a donkey. Surely a miserable beast like this woman should be kindly dealt with. Why this need for a bluff? Why call her hand, just give her the living water and then have a talk about morality, right? The way out of Eden was by the covering of our skin with skins, and the way back to Eden is the figurative denuding of us all over again. The Gospel causes us to find ourselves naked and ashamed in front of our Lord, instead of weaving together the fig leaf excuses of our fallen natures. This bluff strips bare the covers put on sin. This woman, who has done a great deal of uncovering where she should have covered, now is uncovered where in fact she should be uncovered. Her veiled lifestyle of noonday water-drawings is now unveiled by our Lord's veiled command. She is honest now, because Jesus bluffed.

IV. A flicker in the Sun

God is past finding out. There are no mental footholds to his Being that one may climb up and so surmount the peak of his Essence. Were it a mere matter of assumption from one or another accidental* notion, we might gain elevation. As it is, the logic required to scale the cliff is one leap no mortal can make. The pygmy-like categories of thought we assume when we talk about beings cannot contain realistically the innumerable and expansive qualities God possesses. We are not merely talking about quantitative hindrances, however, when we discuss the perfections of God. We also limp along in a qualitative sense when we try to decipher from the ground knowledge of the heavens. We speak about music, as it were, with the language of colors and textures. We can communicate what God is like in reference to other things, but we cannot fully talk about what God is like. The sun flickers and we see it not, blinded by magnitude brightness; shades of indistinguishable brilliance.
So the counter to this is as follows: "if we can't know how would we know?" If we are left with complete epistemological skepticism, how could we tell we couldn't tell hide from hair in reference to the Almighty? Furthermore, if God is not distinguishable due to his qualities from nature by the human mind, what necessitates this God even exists? Perhaps the truth of the matter is we can't find what is not there. Of course you can't decipher the attributes of God, if that Being does not exist. That line of thought is so anthropocentric it needs not be answered with dignity, as it does with indignity. Who are we, as humans, to suppose by the limited power of our organic adding machines to scribble out the calculus of the Universe with any certainty. IF there is a God who possesses perfect, genuine knowledge of all things are we to go head-to-head with imperfect knowledge against his existence with any success? Were not it like a man with a crooked ruler trying to measure the folded, cracked sea floor while gathering his breath between submersed calculations? What certainty can this gypsum board logic produce compared to the cold hard marble of God's own self-existence? The truth is, if we can't know for sure, all the better and more surer we know that God exists. If this universe is fathomable by the mind, and presents itself further unfolded the deeper we think on it, what greater proof that a Perfect mind lies behind its construction and present operation? If this universe were not the produce of a mind, we would expect (though in an asinine, logic-lacking sense) the universe to be as structured and cohesive as tapioca.



*accidental in this sense is an older definition, it does not mean unexpected, but a subsidiary quality like a 'blue' marble. Taking away the blue does not take away its marbleness.

III. Please Let There Be God

Please let there be God. Not a god, because I don't want the abstractions from some men's philosophical calculus. And not that some gods are bad, I just have read those stories and don't want the same conclusion they come to. Please don't let there be just nirvana, an extinguishment of self. It's not that I love self, Christians are taught to deny it, but we eventually long for a redeemed self. Without self, I have nothing to give to God in worship. We long to be freed of the weight and gravity of the self, not the being of the self. So please no nirvana.

And please no paradise, please no endless myriads of virgins. I have lived my life with enough lust for women, I would rather the afterlife not contain more raging fire that will only leave me colder. Having burnt myself in this life, I would not lie long in the arms of 40 virgins before I was an eternal misery rather than a temporal one. The lusty eyes of more women will just make me discontent and more selfish. Please no paradise and no god of that.

And please no endless ladder of karma. I cannot vouch for my future life, that he, she, or it will do any better than this poor creature I am now. I know I can't trust myself from one day to another to get things right, much less one life to another. And how am I to distinguish the unintended consequences of even my good actions? Will what in one life grows in the dung in another life really be joined to god? Please no karma.

And please no seeking the divine in that which is within. Every look deeper into this well is a look deeper into a selfish tangle of soul. If I am to find god within, he was easy to find, yet he is not the god I want ruling the universe. This god is no good, and even if he is, he has no power to do the good. If what I am left with is what is within, as beautiful as it can be when properly framed, I am left with something that ought never be worshiped. Please no god within.

And please not nothing. Please don't tell me there is nothing beyond what is. Please don't tell me if I saw through the universe I'd only see a void. Please don't tell me I am the sum of all my material parts and nothing else. Please don't tell me that in the vast scope of REALITY that to kill is the same as to heal. Don't leave me in a hell for my heaven. Don't tell me the events and loves and hates of my life all extinguish in a blip of nothingness the moment I die. Please no nothing.

Please tell me there is God. The One, and the Three. The found of all goodness. The wellspring of all wisdom. He who is, and was, and is to be. He who before whom there was none, and after whom there will not be another. He who is Holy. Wise. Just. Merciful. The flashpoint of all glory and beauty and truth within the universe. The One from who earth and sky flee away. Please let there be God.

II. Welcome Sickness

I am not alive until I am aware of myself. True self-forgetfulness seems to be what we all long for, yet when we forget ourselves entirely we are as close to death as a terminally sick patient. Those poor, neurotic people we scorn for their continual self-awareness, ringing their nervous hands as they mull over their own brain's workings, they are more alive than you or I. We live in a great paradox where those most alive, at least alive by our rankings, are closest to death. And those who live more like what we consider dying, they are the most alive. We keep our lives tucked away, locked down, bonded and insured; we hedge our risk, and we have in our safe keeping a self-preserved corpse. It's a good thing we like to live dying better than we like to die living. Jesus was spot on, our fallen humanity is an easily predictable thing. Those keeping their lives lose it. Those losing their lives keep it. We are born easily pacified, and the better our parents get at pacifying our raging discontent, the happier we are. The happier we are, it is because the safer we are. And the happier we are because of our safety, the less we live. We are happy to be dead. Not only that, but the less the corpse is dessicated and decomposed, the more restless we get. We don't want the dead to spring alive just yet, it's far too risky to believe in life from the dead. Better to stamp out all trace of life, someone might lose something they couldn't retain, some priceless heirloom might be lost in a rubbish bin so we'd better insure it. My business might go under next year so I'd better have unemployment. It's not that we insure ourselves into a dead stupor, or that we protect ourselves from all failure (and therefore all true success), but we live between the lines so well that we've forgotten failure is something people come back from. We've lost the concept that sometimes disappointment, while smelling like dung, makes really good flowers after the winter is over. Sickness reminds us of health. Those we easily hate make us cherish those we love. And people who truly die remind us to live quickly and profoundly, because we all pass those doors for good all too soon. We leave littler trace than we're inclined to, and even our death rattle is often times a whimper. The futility spun into the fabric of the universe is not without design, creation's groaning voice, she hums of hopeful wholeness that will resurrect into all our gaping wounds. If we have no deformities, wholeness will never be hope fulfilled. If we have no poverties, true riches will never be a shining thrill.

I. Aprioricot

It is entirely impossible that this doesn't exist. The world, life, the vast universe, small microbes, all the myriads of factories humans have built, grand pianos, nachos, love and hate; all of these things are related in a big web of interconnectedness. And either the web exists, or the web doesn't exist. There is really no other basic fundamental concept of reality than the fact that it is either real or it is not real. But if the universe is found to be not real by examination, we have proven it is real by examining it. You see, even the act of examination, therefore, would be the universe. And if examination exists, then what is examined exists along with the examiner. Since the examiner exists, unless we hold that he is the self-starting cause of the examination, we must find a reason for the examiner, and his itch to suddenly examine a cosmos that is somehow fitted for such speculative study. We've already birthed by necessary cause a universe that is examinable, the examiner, the need to examine, the act of examination, and the subsistence in which examination can take place. By necessary cause we now need something ultimate, that neither examines nor can be examined. Why must this exist? Simple necessity. Nothing can cause its cause. If we know the universe only by examining, knowledge is something that therefore exists before examination (since examination cannot cause knowledge) and something must exist that knows without examining. If that exists, and I believe it does, we call such a concept God. Of course making it a concept would be odd. Concepts don't know things, they are known. And to be known means to be passive, and to be passive in knowledge means to be non-existent if unknown. Therefore God cannot be a concept (because to be unknown means to be non-existent and a non-causal agent). Since we said knowledge exists before our knowing (since our examination didn't cause the knowable to exist), we realize God must be an active mind, or a state of knowing that preexists the known. We call that mind (if we can call it that) God. God, therefore, exists, or nothing exists. If you even pretend to argue, you exist, and therefore God exists. And don't try to prove me wrong by logic, because if logic exists, a force greater than our minds exists that we must adhere our minds to, and you are in all kinds of trouble if you believe a mental force greater than our minds exists but have no room for God in your system. The only way to prove me wrong is to stop existing, and please don't do that in the first brief essay.

20 Essays on the End of the World

I've been hatching this idea for a while, and it has refused to go away or take coherent form. Since it won't naturally coalesce into a well-shaped idea, I will accept the amorphous nature therein and commence my diatribe on the End of the World. The natural reading of this due to popular context will be the commencement of the cosmos, rather than the purpose of the planet as might be intended. I say might, because at this point, I really don't know which topic, the cessation or the goal, to entirely devote myself to. It might be that the end of the word and the end of the world are very similarly grouped. When we come to the world, and its intended end in creation, we come to the ultimate snuffing out of all things, and after the last coal extinguishes, the rebirth and re-realization of the earth's intention. By going far enough north, we shall make good time towards the south lands. So over the next few weeks there will be twenty rambling attempts to make good sense of hide and hair, and if not...then not.

If I had a Church today....

Quick random post: If I could start a church today, what would it do? What would its core values be? What mission would we undertake? Etc. Here's a quick rant.

1. Expository Preaching on Sunday mornings (don't read "non-evangelism focused", read "evangelism in context")
2. Theological Education during traditional Discipleship times
3. Outreach to homeless in community (temporary residence, food bank, advocacy service, life-management and job-search help)
4. Liturgical and Reformation-appreciative worship style (No fad gimmick worship, we are sitting on the wave of an ancient tradition, let's not violate sacredness with base forms of relevance) (note: base forms of relevance are different from other forms of relevance, i.e. an acoustic guitar is relevant, but ripping off Vanilla Ice for a praise song is base)
5. Family-centered community involvement (don't dice up ministries and keep the men separate from their family, or kids separate from mom and dad)
6. Smart missions involvement (not a smattering of random trips here and there, but a long-term partnership with missions personnel to equip indigenous leaders to minister)
7. Homeschool families cooperating in the education process (Christian families, homeschooling, is multi-generational discipleship, the church should capture and redeem this facet of society. Not sheltering kids from the 'corrupt' world, but engaging the world through the family)
8. An understanding expectation for commitment from prospective members (if someone wants to join, I wouldn't be so impatient as to rush them through the process. I would want to see commitment and service before the church expects commitment and service. That way they aren't disappointed and we aren't either)
9. Corrective and formative merciful church discipline: you can't punish every sin for every member, but there are certain sins and issues that affect the body of believers in a congregation that must be dealt with either privately or publicly. It is biblical and avoids many pitfalls with unregenerate non-repentant members causing problems under the auspices of membership.
10. Spiritual leadership: no lost used car salesman will be a deacon just because he is well known in the community and has been in church for a while. Too many churches are ruined by unspiritual businessmen who manage God's house like a furniture wholesale store. If a man isn't spiritually adept at layman ministry, he probably isn't fit for administrative leadership in the church.
That's it.

Morality, the Universal type

Morality is the trickiest subject to deal with in postmodern culture. Nobody wants to nail down what is right or what is wrong in a universal sense (i.e. nobody wants to say this is wrong for you and I). But people still want to deal with the categories of right and wrong, people want to use correct and incorrect to describe behavior and principles, even if more limited than in eras past. The existence of morals, which we will call the specifics of right and wrong, is held as a truth. But the definition of morals in a fixed sense is not a tenet of postmodern morality. It is the pronouncing and not the knowing that is wrong (funny how that word works) in postmodernism.

How does this work in practice? When we say we have encountered an objective “right or wrong”, we say the soul has in a figure of speech, hit itself against some immovable wall, or force, that is real but unseen. The soul cannot progress past this point without definite resistance from the unseen reality, and if it acts beyond this boundary it is with real and tangible mutation to its composure. If a person comes across a starving child while walking around in Africa, and has the wallet and time to give him food, most postmoderns would believe this person is morally obligated to fix the problem temporarily. This person should feed the child. If the person does not, there is a cruelty that makes other people shudder in disagreement with the lack of action that has taken place. For you or I to ignore the situation, a moral boundary would be transgressed. Some people feel unable to even think of inaction. Why is that? Is it something internal? If so then we are all bigots for thinking ill of the person who ignores the child. Is it something external? If so, we have found that there is an objective, universal standard at work.

People often try to sidestep this issue of objective morality by saying they do not believe in “wrong or right” but in mental “sickness or health”. To give an example, they would say murder is not evil, but it is only a sickness. What they are trying to do is avoid the standard of good and evil, which they do unsuccessfully, having merely redefined a spiritual problem into a physiological problem, still under the shackle of the standard “sickness or health”. We don't think the person caught the will to murder from a doorknob. It is a mood that is out of balance with what we consider wellness. (Sounds like a moral standard under a different guise) Sometimes people deny even this and talk about collective morality. An action is only good or evil as it relates to the collective will towards the goodness of evilness of particular actions. The people holding this view try to deny the objective and universal nature of morality by making it subjective and regional; derived from existence rather than bending existence to its dictates. This also is a weak attempt. For it to work, it still supposes that good and evil exist externally as categories. Good and evil exist unchangeably, different region recognize them with a slight variation. The only things that change are particular actions within the sphere of good and evil. Notice they do not say “some societies make good good, and others make evil good.” Such a view would be better defended, yet still weak and relying on external universal moral categories to give value to certain particular transient actions. It is also dishonest with the scope of our existence. People do not convene to decide their moral positions on issues unless they are politicians in danger of losing funding. Even when a large number of people act in a way contrary to the moral position of a person, the person can appeal to a third party standard in labeling such actions as wrong by appealing to a sense of morality rather than retiring to a polling station in order to make a judgment. Humans tend to shoot from the hip in moral situations rather than do extensive study in order to formulate an opinion on universals. Most research or inquiry is usually seeing if a particular conforms to any universal opinion. This assumes there is a universal external standard again, and is not proof of subjectivity.

Just an issue I have with peole who claim that different cultures have different morals. Although customs often differ, morals are often fixed issues. Perhaps the best example from history is the issue of stealing. Every culture has treated stealing as an evil as it relates to the local community. Just the identity of property and tribe have changed. White men could steal land from the Indians because they did not hold it as property. But Indians would steal women, food, and belongings from other tribes. Within the tribe there was little to no contention, outside the tribe there was. This is not an example of differing moral standards. Stealing was wrong, whether land or women or children were the property. This was an example of different designation for property. Europeans held that women weren't property and land was. The Indians, women were and land wasn't. Stealing is stealing in both situation.

Atheists who are 'Scientists'

It amazes me how religious atheists can really be. Especially atheists who give reason for their atheism as 'science'. Scientists call creationists superstitious and primitive because we believe God spoke and created the heavens and the earth. “This is just another silly myth,” they mock, “like the Hindus and animists and other non-modern people hold to.” Of course they don’t see the clear difference between a hyper-intelligent being speaking the cosmos into motion in Genesis and a mud-coated giant tortoise shell earth in the Hindu origin stories. They think the belief in rain spirits is evenly paired with the impersonal description of nature in the Hebrew Old Testament.

Of course, don’t mention to them their own foolishness when they talk about random, impersonal, deterministic, chaotic nature [and then try to study and assign laws to this nature]. Especially don’t mock them when they assign to nature a will, a sex (her), and super-intelligence. Don’t tell them they sound almost theistic about the whole idea of her design and her will. Is it so strange that Christians should merely acclaim an additional quality exists to nature, namely personhood, and say “God” rather than “nature”? And yet we are so scorned by those who bestow on her [Nature] such infinite honors and intelligences, only to hear them say out of the other side of their mouths that she is only our perception of what is.

Who believes in the invisible god, the Christian or the Scientist? At least we claim genuine existence is an attribute of our god, whereas Nature exists only as the predilection of the inquisitive nature of humans. Even if God does not exist, just as she [nature] doesn’t really exist, our deity is at least a product of religion whereas the scientist’s god seems the product of an agreed upon professional delusion.

From Creation to Abraham

I am preaching through a series on Abraham during the Sunday night services at the church I attend. I have been very excited about the subject matter, and planned to teach on this ever since I took a Hebrew exegesis class of Genesis 12-36 last Spring. Abraham occupies such a central place in story in Genesis. The earth is created, people sin, murder, fill the earth with violence, God curses the ground and wipes the slate clean, only have to people refill the earth with the same indolence. Abraham is called out of the cursed humanity, bearing the burden of having a barren wife. Sarah at this point represents as a walking parable, the barren, hopeless state of humanity after Creation. Abraham is called out of his own family line, led to a new land, and given a great promise by God. "In you shall all families of the earth be blessed..." The 'good' creation from the garden which was 'cursed' when sin entered the world now finds a focal redemptive point in Abraham. Abraham's faith is not the cause of this blessing, however, as much as God's faithfulness to his own covenant. That is the central point of Genesis. God will be faithful to his intent for Creation, and faithful to his word as Abraham's God. God is created a new humanity, that will be gathered in Abraham for blessing even as he scatters them from Shinar in a curse of chaos.

In the Oven

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I don't think people read this so I guess I do it for myself mainly. I like to write and collect my thoughts so I can reference it later. Life has been hectic. I've had to adjust to a fiance, then a wife, then a pregnant wife, and all of the wonders and labors those things have brought. I need to write more, so I can remember later how this all felt; fearful and joyful hand-in-hand. That's my New Year's Resolution perhaps. Write more.