Thursday, February 28, 2008

WHO wants to inhabit a universe
where every riddle is already solved
where every mystery's made common-place
and the power of paradox slowly dissolves?
What will be left to reach out to,
or to wonder and ask ourselves 'why'
when the unanswered questions we
argue and fight for are neglected until they each die?

WHEN we each eat our fill from the apples that fall
from the tree of the knowledge of life which we shook -
and the wonder of ages and space and of love are all
made merely entries in some scholarly book -

WHEN the last lingering question is finally rendered
a point obselete and dated and moot
and we wholesale abandon the longing to know
and discover, which brings us up out of our youth -

THEN why measure time? For the moments which pass
will be nothing but space for the boredom to fill,
unlikely suggestions of godhood will surface; and
the madman's desire to rise up and kill
will be met in our ego...we haven't begun
to be all we will be when eternity's run
finally grinds to a halt and we all disembark
and we pat our own backs as we grope in the dark.

FOR a mystery solved is a victory won and
a lost childhood dream and
a bright morning sun
urging minds, fresh awake, to embrace a new day;
hold your ignorance close, drive it far, far away.

NEVER give up on knowing nor the wonder which keeps
what we don't know before us and fills up our sleep,
For the things we can see and the things just beyond
are both captured and lost as our race stumbles on.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

the Breastplate of St. Patrick

I rise today
with a mighty power, calling on the Trinity
with a belief in the threeness,
with a faith in the oneness
of the creator of creation

I rise today
with the power of Christ's birth and baptism,
with the power of his crucifixion and burial,
with the power of his resurrection and ascension,
with the power of his return for the final judgment.

I rise today
with the power of the love of the cherubim,
in obedience of angels,
in service of archangels,
in hope of the resurrection and reward,
in the prayers of the patriarchs,
in the foretelling of the prophets,
in the preaching of the apostles,
in the faith of the confessors,
in the innocence of the holy virgins,
in the deeds of righteous men.

I rise today
with the strength of the sky,
with the light of the sun,
with the splendor of the moon,
with the brilliance of fire,
with the blaze of lightning,
with the swiftness of wind,
with the depth of the ocean,
with the firmness of earth,
with the strength of rock.

I rise today
with the power of God to guide me,
with the strength of God to raise me,
with the wisdom of God to lead me,
with the vision of God to see for me,
with the ears of God to hear for me,
with the words of God to speak for me,
with the hand of God to protect me,
with the path of God before me,
with the shield of God to guard me,
with the friendship of God to keep me safe from
the contriving of demons, the temptations of sin,
the inclinations of my nature, and everyone who wishes me harm...

Christ protect me today...
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ below me, Christ above me,
Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I stand,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye which sees me,
Christ in every ear which hears me.

I rise today
with a might power, calling on the Trinity,
with a belief in the threeness,
with a faith in the oneness
of the creator of creation.

[This translation of Faeth fiada is taken from Philip Freeman's excellent biography of St. Patrick. It is a beautiful read; you would enjoy every minute of it.]

St. Patrick of Ireland, by Philip Freeman

Monday, February 25, 2008

The Greatest Faith Christ Saw

When Christ was approached by a Roman officer and asked for a miracle, the officer specifically said that he was "unworthy" or "not deserving." I would like you to try to imagine the way many modern evangelicals would respond to that statement. Frankly, they would attack such a pronouncement as being "negative" and "untrue", possibly a "lie from satan". Instead, the centurion would be told that he "should acknowledge his worth and the glory he was created for as a person of dignity..." etc. etc. etc. This is such a frequent picture lately that the idea of our great worth is regarded as an inviolate truth from On High.

Please notice however, that Christ did not tell the centurion to think better of himself, or stop thinking worthless thoughts, or to "love himself" or to "forgive himself" or whatever it might be. He said that this soldier had faith. Not just any faith, but greater faith than he'd found anywhere in Israel. You see, significance and worth doesn't come from fomenting feelings of power and majesty in people. All that creates is a diversion towards the self. Lots of people are making lots of waves by preaching a gospel of human potential and glory, but this is not how God has chosen to save us. In fact, this is a short-cut and a regression.

Watch: Adam and Eve sinned and fell from grace. That's why it's called The Fall. Christ came with all the majesty and glory of the Godhead as one of us - he brought the human race a glory and majesty and righteousness which had nothing to do with Adam. Our original created state was the highest pinnacle of creation, and it failed. Redemption is the hand of God reaching down from eternity and it cannot fail. When we focus on the glory we were originally created with we are looking backwards, not forwards. We are forgetting the fact that we are fallen and sinful and miserable. Redemption requires that we go through the temporary darkness of realizing our worthlessness (just like the centurion) and only when we do, can we leave it behind. It doesn't matter how we were once created; that potential was spoiled and lost in the garden of Eden. Christ offers us something new and something more, namely, the righteousness and the glory of God.

Redemption requires that our ego be defeated and abandoned, not refurbished and defended. Christ accepted the worthlessness of the centurion, and by accepting it, by naming it Faith, he raised that anonymous Roman to a higher level than all the others around him. Do you remember that right up to the night of Christ's death, his followers were still arguing about who was best? They had a very firm grasp on human glory. They knew how magnificent they'd been created to be. They knew they were made in God's image, children of Abraham, worthy and worthwhile, deserving and well-chosen. Christ's spirit never worked through their faith until all the greatness of their humanity had failed and left them as writhing, yellow cowards, hating their actions and acknowledging their weakness.

The church in our country is weak today because we are increasingly focusing on our strength and our worthiness. Christian leaders are so busy telling us not to feel bad about ourselves that we've forgotten how much we have to feel bad about. This is called repentance. It requires us to hate one thing in order to leave it behind and accept something else. That "something else" is Christ and he is looking for faith. He found it once in a pagan foreigner who compared himself not to Adam, but to Jesus Christ, and found himself worthless. Do you want great faith? Get your focus off yourself, get rid of the advice telling you to pump yourself up with inspirational back-pats, and memorize Philippians 3:7-16. At least read it. It would do all of us a world of good.

Friday, February 22, 2008

What's on Your Bookshelf?

"People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. Life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. Life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. But life is always a novel. Our existence may cease to be a song; it may cease even to be a beautiful lament. Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story. In the fiery alphabet of every sunset is written, 'to be continued...'"
- GK Chesterton, Heretics

“...while most of us realize how dangerous it is to expose ourselves to immoral content, we often fail to realize that the form of popular culture affects us just as much – not only what is said but also how it is said… The best way to grasp this is by a comparison to high culture. A sonnet or a symphony has a complex structure that takes some effort to understand. It challenges us; we have to work to appreciate it. That’s why we study Shakespeare in English classes and Mozart in music-appreciation courses. But who takes courses to understand Madonna? Who needs to? Who takes Soap Opera 101? Who needs Cliff’s Notes to understand a Harlequin romance?”
- Chuck Colson, How Now Shall We Live?

Let us remember that our brains are capable of far more than we demand from them; our minds will stretch as far as we ask them to. We will never see or reach or rise above our highest effort, and we live in an age which is viscerally opposed to effort in any exercise which does not involve money or physical fitness, and that is because we have to earn money so as not to starve to death, and we tend to be too obsessed with our looks. Every other part of our lives is a constant, uncomprehending race away from effort, discomfort, or inconvenience. We either expect things to be made automatic by technology, or avoidable by some hireling. But while we admit that the discipline to excel at our jobs in unavoidable, and physical fitness cannot be proxied, we frequently have no such understanding or concern about our spirits, in spite of the fact that scripture assumes everywhere that we will pour out our lives as a 'living sacrifice'. Small investment always yields small benefits, especially within the threshold of eternity.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Blind by Choice...

[Albert Speer directed the production of arms and ammunition for the Third Reich during the last days of world war two. When the war was over and he stood accused with other prisoners of war at the famous Nuremburg trial, he had months during which to contemplate the role he played during those critical years. This excerpt comes from his book, Inside The Third Reich.]

"[B]eing in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibilty for the consequences - from the very start... One day, some time in the summer of 1944, my friend Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter of Lower Silesia, came to see me. In earlier years he had told me a great deal about the Polish and French campaigns, had spoken of the dead and wounded, the pain and agonies, and in talking about these things had shown himself a man of sympathy and directness. This time, sitting in the green leather easy chair in my office, he seemed confused and spoke falteringly, with many breaks. He advised me never to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia. Never, under any circumstances. He had seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe...

"I did not investigate, for I did not want to know what was happening there. Hanke must have been speaking of Auschwitz. During those seconds, while Hanke was warning me, the whole responsibility had become a reality... Those seconds were uppermost in my mind when I stated to the international court at the Nuremburg trial that as an important member of the leadership of the Reich, I had to share the total responsibility for all that had happened. For from that moment on, I was inescapably contaminated morally; from fear of discovering something which might have made me turn from my course, I had closed my eyes."

[Is it not the greatest condemnation of humanity that we love darkness rather than light, because our deeds are evil? May God have mercy on us all.]

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

A Prophecy by Soren Kierkegaard - with commentary

[In the following entry, my commentary is italicized while the words of Kierkegaard appear in regular font.]

Suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube which, say, could be heard over the whole land... I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing that the whole country would become mentally deranged if it were used.

[Kill your television now before you and your whole family become pod-people!]

On the whole the evil in the daily press consists in its being calculated to make, if possible, the passing moment a thousand or ten thousand times more inflated and important than it really is. But all moral elevation consists first and foremost in being weaned from the momentary.

[Wake up and smell the fact that this present moment only matters in light of eternity.]

If Christianity is really to be proclaimed, it will become apparent that it is the daily press which will, if possible, make it impossible. There has never been a power more diametrically opposed to Christianity as the daily press. Day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude men with the supreme axiom of this lie, that numbers are decisive. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the thought that the truth lies in the single individual.

[Television makes us slaves to popular fashion! You will not be free unless you stop caring about the things they want you to care about, like American Idol and superbowl ads, and simply cherish what Christ plants within your soul!]

If someone adopts the opinion of the public today and tomorrow is hissed and booed, he is hissed and booed by the public. A nation, an assembly, a human being can change in such a way that they are seen to be no longer the same; but the public can become the very opposite and is still the same, the public.

[God can change an individual, or even ten thousand individuals, but nobody can transform a mob or a crowd.]

It is very doubtful, then, that the age will be saved through the notion of social organization, of association. In our age the principle of association (which may at best have validity with respect only to material interests) is an evasion, a dissipation, an illusion, whose dialectic is that as it strengthens the individuals, so it weakens them. It strengthens by numbers, by solidarity, but from the ethical point of view this is a weakening. Not until the single individual has established an ethical stance in spite of the whole world, not until then can there be any question of genuinely uniting. Otherwise it gets to be a union of people who separately are weak; a union as unbeautiful and depraved as a child marriage.

[The only way to make a group of people strong and effective is if it is made up of individuals who have stong ethics, good morals, and God's values; and they must have embraced these on their own.]

Monday, February 18, 2008

a tribute to Psalm 32

All the sin I try to hide,
All the secrets locked inside
Make me too ashamed to try to seek Your face
But You're everywhere I've been
Stronger than my sin
Let me open up my life before Your grace

Show my heart the way to go
Let my faithless spirit know
That Your mercy gives me strength to face the day
Your unfailing love
Surrounds me with sounds of
My deliverance & this is why I pray

Take the past away from me
Nail it to the cross of Christ and let it be
Thrown with all my guilt into the deepest sea
Set me free to live tomorrow in Your Name

Thursday, February 14, 2008

the most honest atheist of all

“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, ‘I seek God! I seek God!’ As many of those who do not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Why, did he get lost? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
“‘Whither is God’ he cried. ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever will be born after us – for the sake of this deed he will be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.’
“Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. ‘I come too early’ he said then; ‘my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering – it has not yet reached the ears of man. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is more distant from them than the most distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves.’
“It has been related further than on the same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to have replied each time, ‘What are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?’”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

“Now it is our preference that decides against Christianity, not arguments.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Exceptions which prove the rule - pt. 2

A SACRED SORROW, by Michael Card

Card, like Richard Foster, is still alive and kicking, still ministering in a variety of ways. Music is his primary medium, but he has also handled some tough subjects from scripture in some vibrant and very unique ways. One subject which (apparently) few authors or theologians believe worthy of our sustained attention is what we call lament. This word is unfashionable; it reminds us that sometimes we don't feel like More Than Conquerors. Sometimes we find ourselves in the rubble of a life which has crumbled.

Awhile ago I had a conversation with a gal during which I made a passing reference to feelings of inadequacy and coldness towards God. I was talking about my own experiences; admitting that there are times (I assumed in the life of every believer) when reading God's word is difficult, when praying feels useless, when obedience comes hard - or not at all - and we are limping along. Her response to me was "We used to call that 'Backsliding.'"

Not to question her choice of words, her attitude nonetheless caused me some genuine concern. After all, if there is a time in my life when I need support and encouragement to meet the minimum standards of discipline and love, and if I turn to another believer for help, will I be told that I am merely backsliding?

Fortunately that mindset is not always pervasive among Christians. I know many believers (some of them are pastors) whose welcoming acceptance makes confession and transparency possible. This openness is a reflection of the biblical habit of taking fears and doubts, hatred and panic, confusion and longing and bitterness to God and expressing them all without having to be terrified of some divine backlash. God was consistently patient and kind with those who were at the mercy of their own emotions.

The point of Card's book is not just that such moments exist, but that in such cases lamenting... the act of wringing our souls out like a dishrag... is actually a necessity. These poems of grief and betrayal (even sometimes directed at God) can be, Michael says, a bridge across our suffering to the wholeness beyond.

I am concerned that too often our goal is to convince ourselves that the suffering does not really exist, or that it doesn't matter, or that it shouldn't affect us, or that it won't last so we should just concentrate on the future. It is an unavoidable fact of our existence that there will be days when the sufferings of this present time will be so loud, so brash, so painfully there, that we will be unable to see the future glory. That consolation is real, but it doesn't help if we can't move to a place where we can see and lay hold of our great hope.

In this regard our music sometimes helps us more than our theologians. Christian songs often speak frankly and un-selfconsciously about the agony which we encounter in life and the difficulty of walking with God. Perhaps it is simply unavoidable that the arts are going to express these truths more comprehensively and more tangibly than doctrine will. Maybe that's why these realities are expressed in the Bible, not as epistles of faith, but as poems and music. But the amazing thing is that they are expressed at all. God is not afraid of the sensation of abandonment or the appearance of defeat; if he were, we would not have the cross.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Cosmos Conscious

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained – What is man that You are mindful of him?”

David wrote that question roughly three thousand years ago. I don’t know if you live in a place where the city lights screech for attention at night, or whether you’ve ever been miles from home on a moonless night when the stars are at their most brilliant, but in David’s day it would have been a short trip away from the fire to find a dark shadow, a spot where all the visible stars in the cosmos seem to sparkle down like an orchestra of light. That sight prodded an obvious question in him, namely, given the size of the universe, and our inconspicuous placement within it, why does humanity merit God’s attention?
For David, the answer was that man’s exaltation was a favor granted by God because of His own excellence. Today we call that grace, or the undeserved attention and blessings of our Maker. After Copernicus helped us to see the sun and earth in proper relation secular scientists used that information to make a dangerous leap of blind faith. They said that in the same way our planet is not the center of the solar system, humanity is not the point of creation.. Hopefully we can see that making broad, sweeping philosophical generalities on the basis of observations by physicists is a fool’s game. Physics can tell us what, but not why. Sometimes how, but never who.
In David’s time the stars were abundant and brilliant. But once men started to make telescopes the universe seemed to explode into an infinitely more complex and daring place. The wildest imaginings of humanity were dwarfed and made obsolete by nothing more poetic than simple reality. Scientists do have plenty to wonder about in this age of amazing discoveries. One galaxy recently discovered has two sets of spiral arms spinning in opposite directions “like a double pinwheel.” Old stars and young planets, dust clouds and violent explosions and violence which produces beauty... space is like a fireworks display which has been spread out over eons, across thought-defying stretches of emptiness. After all these millennia, human beings are finally starting to enjoy the spectacle. Now that we’ve used our creativity and our curiosity to look beyond our shallow sphere, we can see that the moon and stars, the heavens – the work of God’s fingers – inspire even more awe than they did when the shepherd boy from Bethlehem gazed up at the night sky. If what he felt can be described as awe, then what words are left to us today?
Our language has many words, but none of them are adequate. The human race (and believers especially) are standing within a great threshold of the imagination where words like infinite and unimaginable and vast are taking on something like their real power. We are looking into an abyss of beauty so enormous that it must thrill and terrify us. The galaxies we now see swirl and spin in spite of us, and for us; a Davidic dance of worship in the night skies. The universe grows in the act of discovery, and we find as much in the minute as in the galactic to marvel at. Consciousness cannot drink it in, and intellect cannot fathom it. Pure, random joy sparks and explodes at the molecular level in a free association of unpredictability.
Our order and beauty and sense ride like raft on the surface of chaotic mystery so that the very stuff of life is a new enigma that we can describe but not explain. It is left not to our cognitive senses but to our imagination to revel in this new reality, and if you haven’t experienced a spontaneous gush of worshipful reverence, then you haven’t been paying attention. Let the brilliance of the universe lift your sights from what is, to what can be. If our sanctified fancy can ride this wave of incoming luminosity, then we will soar to heights our ancestors never envisioned; and our words and ideas will travel further beyond, farther above, carried forever on a beam of light from a newly discovered star. Gloria.

Friday, February 1, 2008

What is Christian Literature?

What is Christian literature?

Christians are story tellers because Christianity is a true story born out of a true story. We tell stories because we must, because our God-given imaginations burst with ideas and images which beg to be told, and to tell them we must have some way to get them out of our minds and into someone else's mind. Christ used stories because he was one of us. The Old Testament before him used stories, both history and parables, to get ideas into our hearts through our imagination. Human beings need to tell stories, and the more Christian we are the more we will probably feel this compulsion. It is a part of our heritage.

Christian stories should follow the example of Christ, because Christ remains for all time the penultimate story-teller. There are several components to his stories which can be easily drawn from the examples we have in scripture.

First, it is important to note that Christ's stories were not always uplifting; frequently they end on a sad note. The tale of the rich man and Lazarus mentions the eternal joy of Lazarus only as a counterpoint to contrast the real purpose of the story - the rich man writhing in agoney, eaten by flames yet never consumed, begging for mercy and finding none. There are many examples of this deferment to real life. Christ was a realist, for more than anyone else in this world he could see the truth behind people's facades. That's why his parables seek primarily to illuminate us rather than uplift us artificially. They sometimes leave us with a sense of fulfillment (the widow finds her missing coin; the lost lamb is brought back to the fold) but just as often we are left with longing, as when the five foolish virgins are shut outside the wedding feast forever because of their own shortsightedness, or the oldest son's bitterness overshadows the joy of his prodigal brother's return. Why do we not have more stories in which the whole moral is a warning, a counterpoint to victory? Something reminiscent of the book of Judges would be refreshing less for its content than for its rarity.

Christ's stories were also subtle. His disciples asked him why he spoke in parables, and his answer is almost as enigmatic as the stories themselves. "You will be ever hearing but never understanding." These days we paint the main point in bright primary colors so that it cannot possibly be misunderstood or lost. Christ was bolder. He used shades of meaning, subtlety and innuendo. He made oblique references and brazen analogies which could be misunderstood and misinterpreted. He took that risk just like he walked on the water, and those who follow him rarely stay afloat after his example. Occasionally someone will take a few tentative steps in his direction before sinking, but mostly we stay in the boat. How much better to take the risks he took, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to mystery and misinterpretation! How wonderful it would be to have a masterpiece to puzzle over rather than a book, a study guide, a journal and a seminar all based around the same momentary bubble.

Christ's stories were deeply spiritual, but this was often quite impossible to see at first. On the surface they mostly dealt with earthy things which were ordinary and tangible. The spirituality of the implications combined with the humility of the devices he chose should endow our own ordinary lives with grace. I am sure Christ did not tell parables of plowshares and sheep and grapevines and mustard seeds just so his followers could clog their stories with demons and psychotic villains and wealthy-handsome love-interests.

Tragedy as well as mercy; mystery as well as illumination; grace found in the simple and plain things in life. Christ was the most fearless story teller who ever lived. That is why our stories should be fearless, crackling with subtlety and insinuation, eternal and realistic. That, rather than a simple recitation of gospel truths, makes for Christian literature. The more deeply devoted we become to the stark fluency of scripture, the more we will long for the same standards in our books. If we demand more, we will receive more.

the letter of Aristides to Hadrian Caesar, explaining the Christian religion

“But Christians… show kindness to those near them; and whenever they are judges, they judge uprightly… they do good to their enemies… if one of them have bondsmen and bondswomen or children, through love towards them they persuade them to become Christians, and when they have done so, they call them brethren without distinction. They do not worship strange gods, and they go their way in all modesty and cheerfulness. Falsehood is not found among them; and they love one another… And he who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting. And when they see a stranger, they take him in to their own homes and rejoice over him as a very brother… And if they hear that one of their number is imprisoned or afflicted on account of the name of their Messiah, all of them anxiously minister to his necessity… And if there is any among them that is poor and needy, and they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food… Such, O King… is their manner of life… And verily, this is a new people, and there is something divine in the midst of them.”