If God is dead, someone is going to have to take His place. This was the sentiment that ultimately led to the initially reluctant ascension of Science into the “vacant” seat of God. The skeptics of Climate Change have wondered at the veracity of the claims made. Despite the myriad of dupes who truly want to help save the planet, the perpetrators unmasked in recent emails seem to have an entirely different agenda. Think of it in terms of Morpheus’ famous explanation of the Matrix “What is Global Warming? Control. Global warming in the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to turn a human being…into this.” And holds up a squirming rodent. A lemming.
The believers think that humankind has betrayed their natural heritage. Intoxicated by their unique position in nature, they took the Biblical injunction and proceeded to “dominate the earth,” to bring it under their control, to serve their own ends, no matter what damage was inflicted. For the purposes of this essay, we will assume that the emails represent the truth, that the scientific community conspired to cook the books, skew the research to support their preconceived notions and political agendas, and silence any who oppose them. And by doing so, to destroy Science as it has become to be known, as it originally was intended to be.
First, however, we shall chart the gradual usurpation of God by science as the supreme authority and function-maker of reality, truth, and behavior. The changing of the guard began gradually as scientists began questioning and then rejecting the religious interpretation and explanation of the universe. “No thanks,” said they, “you fundamentalists keep your archaic traditions and backward ignorance, and go worship a grey-bearded old killjoy who scours the earth and rains fire and brimstone on anyone who looks to be enjoying themselves. We’ll take a more objective view of reality, thank you very much.” So God as the standard for Truth, the explanation of The Way Things Are exited stage left, and naturally the tendency was to look for a replacement to that which dethroned him. Science was on the rise, complete with a new lawgiver (Darwin) and a slew of prophets (Marx, Freud, Heidegger, and Nietzsche, to name a few).
Now, a delightful (though hardly unanticipated) byproduct of the elimination of that pesky nuisance God was the discovery that with God went all those injunctions against certain behaviors. Man was free to do whatever he pleased and hang the consequences (assuming there were any). This mentality reached its crescendo during the Sexual Revolution, and has begun another rise in recent years as more and more the values and prohibitions of any semblance of a Judeo-Christian set of morality are abandoned by the wayside.
Unfortunately, Nature, as we all know, abhors a vacuum, and just as Science had replaced God as the fount of knowledge and making sense of reality, the absence of God’s moral laws also left a vacuum of a different kind. Morality exists to tell humans how to behave toward other nouns. It is curious that humans need a moral code of any kind; other animals don’t seem to have one and get along quite fine just by following their instincts. If a human followed every one of his instincts with the purity of an animal, however, he would be generally considered the most monstrous and egomaniacal being ever to draw breath. At least, by every human he came into contact with. He would quickly learn that to adhere to his instincts with absolute obedience created intolerable conflict with other beings he came into contact with, and would reasonably expect a short, if self-gratifying, life. Consider the evil a man can do by following his instincts; the primary reason for this is that his instincts, unlike the animal world, are not geared merely for survival, but rather self-gratification.
Regardless, with the rejection of absolute truth (except the absolute truth of rejecting absolute truth) man was in a bind: how to behave? How then should he live? Again, science was tapped to fill the void, which it did (initially), with an appropriate sense of reluctance. After all, science is the pursuit of truth, of fact, to discover how the universe functions and why, which it accomplishes by observation and measurement. But how to measure a life? How to measure behavior? How to measure interactions with other people? How to measure what a man should and shouldn’t do? The scientist can’t measure the love of a mother for her child or the obligation to give alms the same way he can measure the light passing through a prism or the gravitational constant of 9.8 meters/second squared. This is one problem that science has yet to solve, though the disciplines of the social sciences attempt to redress the situation, with psychology, anthropology, and political science.
An aside: in no other example is this principle more evident that in the fraud known as Climate Change or Global Warming. Once scientists had reached a consensus that this phenomena was happening and that man was somehow responsible (which is utterly contrary to the very nature of Science; either something is a verifiable fact or it isn’t; simply agreeing with others that reality is a particular way has no bearing on whether or not reality really is that way! Science is not up for a vote; if it’s a consensus, it’s still a hypothesis, not a fact), then the science naturally suggested courses of action that must be undertaken. Among the first major culprits were major plants and corporations for disposing of waste materials in haphazard and irresponsible ways, as well as the military industrial complex for similar reasons, along with the pernicious practice of testing weapons (Goodbye Bikini Island!). Next came indictments on labor-saving devices like incandescent light bulbs, air conditioners, household appliances, with the latest crackdown involving means of transportation such as SUVs, trucks, airplanes, etc. This reached a ridiculous zenith when one popular musician exhorted a restriction on the use of toilet paper, a proposal met with general incredulity and skepticism and a rare victory of common sense and reality in the Climate Change deception. A corollary involved the very food we eat, as the carbon footprint needed to produce certain foods was calculated and condemned as extravagant and wasteful. This also allowed advocates greater measures of control over what people eat, what kinds of items they bought, what kinds of cars were manufactured, what people chose to do with their lives and where they chose to go, and so forth. All this was justified as helping to save the planet by reducing greenhouse gases that were causing Global Warming.
The dirty little secret is, however, that the agenda came before the science. For decades politicians and demagogues have been angling for ways to exert greater control over people’s lives, to expand government intervention into every aspect of daily life. Global Warming represents merely the latest attempt, and should it fail it will not be the last. But the foundation of science was need to cow and coerce acquiescence among the populace, and a cause that appeals simultaneously to human shame and human pride, undergirded by the authority of science, accomplished this nicely.
Inevitably, there arrived a point in the general encroachment of science upon society where some people took a step back and wondered at the tendency of sterilization that comes from an over-exaggerated scientific worldview. If people are reduced to ciphers, numbers on a page, different only from termites in complexity, then an unlimited potential for abuse arises, as evidenced in one man’s attempt to eradicate a people group from the earth much the same way as a homeowner seeks to rid his house of the aforementioned pests: with ruthless efficiency, determination, and complete disregard for objections to his intentions. Hence recent trends toward mysticism, spiritualism, and the glorification and anthropomorphism of Nature that have arisen, rebelling against the scientific disregard of the “soulishness” of things. Why do some choke up as a newborn enters the world, or the sun shimmers on the horizon, or a pale stream dances like a ribbon of sparkles as it bounds down a mountainside? Why do some rebuff innumerable advances for years from one person, but marry another within six months of meeting them? Karma, destiny, fate, and so forth; New Ageism had arrived.
Of course, imperative was keeping God out of the picture, allowing humans to keep doing as they please, so the mysticism and spiritualism sought involves impersonal and hazy connotations of transcendental meditation, yoga, and a variety of Eastern philosophies that provide some guidance and a thin candy coat of connection to something greater than themselves, without having to actually change any fundamental behavior or attitude. Madonna ties a string around her wrist, memorizes a few phrases and keywords, and suddenly embodies Kabbalah. Has she changed her behavior, or who she is in the slightest? Not a whit! But she feels better about herself and remains free to continue her life’s trajectory exactly as it was a year ago, or two or ten or twenty, and demonstrates a veneer of depth and philosophical enlightenment that others hasten to emulate.
Now, this is not to say that these spiritualists entirely reject science. Science provides a nice safety net beneath them, cushioning any philosophical tumbles that a theist might cause. Science still reigns as undefeated champion, providing an explanation of reality and allowing humans to pursue their own appetites and opinions. Science is in his laboratory, all is right with the world. (Though I suppose Science could be a she. After all, God’s a he and Science replaced God as supreme, so Science must certainly be considered a she. Perhaps as an amalgamation of Mother Gaia-Nature.)
It is vital to trace the progression of Science as an explanation of reality and source of truth and behavior, for the following reason. If God is dead and Science took over for Him, what happens if Science dies?
Well, you reply, no problem there. I see no indication that science is anything other than healthy and hale. But now we come back to Climate Change and the ensuing scandal that threatens to undermine the entire worldview that has been fostered by it. For Science has been built upon a foundation of absolute truth.
We’ve already talked about the rejection of the Absolute (usually conceived of as God) as the requirement for the elimination of God and the rise of secularism and scientific supremacy. Science’s main claim to authority was based on the objectivity and verifiability of its finding. If you prove paper burns at 451 Fahrenheit, or that water freezes at 0 Celsius, then anyone who cares to try to verify your findings should find that however they repeat or modify the experiment, the findings remain constant. Water always freezes at 0 Celsius; paper always burns at 451 Fahrenheit. To dispute those findings is to dispute reality; reality wins that dispute every time. And when reality finds itself at odds with religion, then logic and reason dictate that religion must be wrong. Because we can see reality right here; it’s indisputable. It’s not up for debate. And if religion clashes with it, then religion must be wrong. Correct?
And while Science maintained its pure veneer of objectivity and truth, it could dictate or prohibit anything as long as it could prove the harmful or disadvantageous results of said truth it was proving or disproving. If using DDT to kill malaria led to birth defects and premature death, if the results proved it every time the experiments were tried, then the pros and cons could be weighed objectively and a course of action decided upon a firm foundation of Science. Science was the ultimate ivory tower: untainted by human bias or religious hokum, unfettered by political agendas or practical traditions.
Until now. Because human scientists, after all, are humans first and scientists second. Because sometimes the data an experiment produces doesn’t fit into the agenda a human might posses, an agenda the research was designated to support. Because sometimes scientists want to bask in public adoration and prestige, to be trendsetters and policy makers, to make a difference with their findings instead of letting others interpret and implement based on their findings, whether they rejoice in the direction the data heads or not. Science is not, after all, immune to being manipulated to serve an end greater than simply determining the truth about something, to measuring data and making conclusions that can only be reached by using logic and reason based on the findings. If the world temperature trends for the last thousand years show Climate Change rising as the number of SUVs flooded the market, then so be it. If the research shows no average temperature increase for the last 20 years, so be it. Scientists aren’t responsible for having opinions about their findings, only for reaching those findings in repeatable, measurable ways.
Throughout the ages, religious procedures have involved three components: the people, the deity, and the priesthood. The people are those that give power to the religion through their devotion, obedience, and offerings, as mandated by the precepts and dictates of the deity. The deity could be a typical figure like the Judeo-Christian God, or the alternate versions from Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism, etc. But the deity is ultimately the part of the religion that justifies the demands made on the people from the priesthood. The priesthood is the true power of the religion, traditionally. They decide what the deity demands and communicates this to the people. The priests at Delphi would sit in a room next to where the Oracle would speak under divine inspiration, interpret the words being spoken that they heard through the opening in the wall, and then relate these to the people. Whether or not they were legitimate is the element of faith. Catholics trust the Pope and bishops; Muslims trust the Ayatollah and imams; Christians trust pastors and evangelists; Mormons trust prophets and Joseph Smith; and Jews trust rabbis, Moses, and the high priests. This is a fundamental element of religion, the concept of the intermediary.
(Side note: Herein lies the unique position of Christianity in the pantheon of religious systems. For, in a true understanding of the Gospel, earthly intermediaries do not exist. There is one intermediary between Christians and God: Jesus Christ, who happens to also be God. Thus God is the intermediary between God and man.)
I say all this because the role of intermediary is dependent upon the people’s respect and faith in several things. First is the veracity of the deity the intermediary represents; if no one believed in God, priests, imams, and the Pope would be out of work. Second, and as important, is the trustworthiness of the intermediary himself. If the intermediary proves false or inaccurate, the people will either abandon their belief in the deity itself, or simply ignore or distrust whatever the intermediary says, no matter how accurate or supported his statements are. The trust is gone and with it the authority of the priesthood to legislate reality and behavior.
And this is the danger for Science. Because the threat of Climate Change has been embraced and advocated vociferously by the majority of scientists, though again not all, which should have given the populace pause. Science as a whole has staked its reputation on this issue, and should it be proven to be a hoax, science will lose its vaunted place of prestige and authority in the realms of declaring truth, behavior and reality. Like a prophet whose prognostications fail to transpire, science will lose the ear of its audience, no matter what future predictions or pronouncement it makes with accuracy and precision.
Whether or not Science should be given a second chance remains to be seen. Science as a field of study is a worthy and useful discipline, provided its limitations are understood. Like a gun, science fulfills a particular function, the description of reality, observable physical phenomena in the universe. But like a gun, science cannot dictate behavior, and like a gun it is only as benevolent as those who use it. A gun can be used for good, when understood and handled with discipline and discernment. The potential for abuse is regrettably present and springs from the very nature of the gun. With science, the potential for abuse is correspondingly greater, as science attempts universal explanation and understanding. Understanding the theory of splitting the atom can lead to atomic energy, a clean and nearly perpetual source. It can also lead to weapons of incredible power, which in the wrong hands can be used to hold a planet hostage, or at the very least decimate countless human lives in a moment.
But Science is still only a tool, a window into the natural world. When it is used or abused to serve political, ideological, or religious ends, it ceases to be science. If scientists understand this and resolve to merely investigate and describe reality instead of trying to change it, then Science will be restored to its true nature. Of course, this leaves the question of morality, the legislation of behavior unresolved, but that is beyond the purview of science.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
How to Kill a Friendship: A Simple Formula
This is the story of how I destroyed a friendship in a single moment.
In order to give some context to the tale, I must explain a little about myself. I have always been, for as long as I can remember, the Good Boy. I behaved myself for the most part as a child, avoiding wrongdoing (or at least, the appearance of it) and thereby avoiding punishment, to the point where my siblings accused me of being my parents’ favorite child simply because they disciplined me less often. This was not born out of any great sense of purity or obedience to my parents as much as it was simply a mechanism of self-preservation. Looking back, I admit that it was partly motivated by a natural desire to please one’s parents and bask in their compliments for good behavior. For whatever reason, however, I didn’t do stupid or reckless or daring things very much, preferring to play sports, read and watch TV, solitary activities for the most part. I find this still determines the trajectory of my life.
Add my Christian faith to my natural inclination to avoid conflict and punishment, and you have what might be called a holy roller, or “goody-two shoes” I suppose. I didn’t swear or make crude and insensitive jokes, though I laughed at them an unfortunate amount of the time. I didn’t do malicious things to people, argue or scuffle, or disgrace myself in overt ways. I put up a good front.
My friend Larry, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. He was loud, boorish at times, and at other times downright disgusting, in a juvenile kind of way. He was a Christian as well, but his natural inclination was for humor and jokes. He forever would try to shock and appall people, and in me found an easy target for his needling. He would tell crude stories and expose parts of his anatomy better left unseen. I liked him immediately.
Larry married a woman named Kim, who was quiet, reserved, mature…in other words, everything that Larry was not. It was shocking how diametrically opposed they were in character, but she must have seen something in him to look past his antics, though she certainly got a full dose of them over the course of their relationship.
Now, the other thing you need to know before I begin this story is that Larry is a kind of throwback when it comes to certain areas of life and Christianity. He is enamored with the traditions and mentalities prevalent two or three hundred years ago. Despite his childish sense of humor, about some things he is very strict and old fashioned. This must have been a contributing factor in the events that conspired.
Around the time I was finishing up my undergraduate degree, a friend who went to my church was going to get married. Our pastor’s son and another guy from church were going to go, and I decided to come along with them. Larry and his wife were going to go separately. The three of us drove a long six hours or so to
I don’t remember how it came up, but for whatever reason the other two guys suggested that I, who was sitting in the back seat, moon our friends following us. In a moment of recklessness I agreed, and proceeded to lower my pants and flash my gluteus maximus at the trailing car, probably about three car lengths behind us. We had a good laugh as we proceeded on to the restaurant, agreeing that this was just the sort of thing that Larry was probably chortling about as well.
Once we pulled in, Larry got out of the car, walked over to us as we asked him if he’d seen it, and punched me in the chest. Larry, being a physical type, was prone to playfully punch people in the arms, hard enough to hurt a little but not enough to cause any real discomfort. This blow was different, clearly struck in anger, and his face was stony as he demanded that I apologize immediately to his wife, still sitting in their car. No trace of laughter or humor was evident on his face, and it was plain that he regarded my compliance with his demand as non-negotiable. Though he gave no overt indication, the implication I perceived was that he was ready to force me to apologize if necessary.
Stunned, I walked over to the car and apologized to his wife. She was understanding, and admitted that she didn’t even see it happen, which belied Larry’s claim that she was very upset about it. I admitted the stupidity of my action and we went inside to eat. The rest of that evening is something of a haze; I remember sitting in the Subway and staring at nothing as my brain reeled, seeking to reconcile Larry’s extreme reaction with the brand of humor he usually enjoyed and employed.
That night, my friends consoled me, expressing their disbelief in his overreaction, his immediate jump to violence. Here was a man of the Lord, deeply spiritual, who knew the sort of person I was as we had had a Bible study together for a year, along with some other young men. Did he really think I was trying to insult his wife? Had he not done things and said things far more beyond the pale than what I had done? I was not defending my actions; they were wrong and juvenile, and had he requested an apology I would have been happy to oblige. The fact that he felt he needed to force me to apologize bespoke of something deeper at work. Either his wife was more upset that she let on, or I had crossed some line with him that he could not countenance. He had claimed that he was not upset or insulted by my actions, but had taken steps because Kim was.
That night I lay in bed, unable to sleep. Bitter thoughts and recriminations coursed through my mind. I was hurt, humiliated, and angry. How dare he! He, with the sensibilities and sense of humor of a junior high boy! What an incredible double standard! And the punch! What kind of man flies off the handle that way? Did he think I wouldn’t apologize? Did he not know me at all? I’m not the sort of insult people for a malicious laugh! Of all people to take umbrage with someone’s behavior, LARRY! Incredible! Outrageous! Despicable!
I awoke the next day miserable. I didn’t understand his actions, and I was keenly aware that I had been the root cause of this disaster. The one stupid, thoughtless thing I do in life (at least in public), and I fracture a friendship in the blink of an eye! Way to go, David. The more I thought about it, the more I concluded that what I had done must have offended Larry at least as much as it had offended Kim, if in fact Kim had been offended at all. I decided that I needed to apologize to Larry himself.
In a dubious move I eschewed direct confrontation and emailed him a lengthy letter in which I admitted again my culpability in the incident and that I felt the need to apologize to him. After doing so, I also said that his reaction to the incident was unduly violent and that he had offended and hurt me with his words and deeds. In a couple of days he responded with a reply that insinuated that I had been overly sensitive about the matter, but if I was going to demand an apology he would oblige. That was the tone of the letter, and I was not satisfied with his response, but not wanting to stir up any more animosity than already existed between us I let the matter lay.
A few weeks passed, during which he and I did not run in to each other. Then he sent another email in which he confessed that the tenor of the first email was as critical as it was apologetic and offered a more sincere apology, both for the incident and for the first email. I responded by accepting his apology and the matter seemed to have been laid to rest.
Except that I lost his friendship. He moved out of town, but even before then we never hung out together again. We never even talked or met again. My actions and his reaction had damaged our relationship beyond repair. It is one of the most profound regrets of my entire life.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The Death of Romance
Recently I watched a movie called He's Just Not That Into You, based on a book written by two screen writers from the TV series Sex and the City. I was ignorant of the story's origins when watching it, but that knowledge makes sense based on what I know about that show and what the movie is about. I was pondering the prophetic perspicacity of C. S. Lewis' last published work before his death, a social critique called "We Have No Right To Happiness." Note: I'm going to discuss some of the plot points to the movie and article, so if you're not interested in finding out about either, save this for after you've seen the movie. Still there? Then read on.
Lewis begins his commentary relaying a story involving a comment that a neighboring socialite made. In relation to hearing that a man had recently divorced his wife to marry a woman who had divorced her husband, this socialite said, "Well, after all, they had a right to happiness." Lewis ponders the meaning, implications and etymology of this particular phrase in various insightful and prognosticating ways. He distinguishes the concept of a right to happiness with the famous sentiment from the US Constitution, the right to the "pursuit of happiness." Without restating the entire article, which I highly recommend you peruse, the gist of what he says amounts to this: that sexual happiness (the happiness referred to by the socialite and by the husband when defending his behavior, whether they realize it or not) is transitory, based upon emotion and whim; that the pursuit of sexual expression has achieved a hitherto unparalleled position of condonement for any pernicious or ungracious behavior; and that women will always be at a disadvantage in this dynamic since they lose their sexual appeal as they age whereas men rely less on looks and beauty to attract women.
Any of you who have seen the movie I referenced at the beginning will immediately recognize the connection with Lewis' essay. For the plot of the movie is about a group of people, women and men, who are all in relationships or trying to get in relationship with someone, usually someone else from that group. Of particular interest is the subplot involving Scarlett Johansson's character and Bradley Cooper's character. Cooper is married to Jennifer Connelly in the movie, though we don't discover this for a while. The two meet in a store and converse for a while, obviously attracted to each other. Cooper's character then deflects Johansson by explaining that he's married. Instead of walking away and breaking all contact, he gives her a card and she pursues him, ultimately succeeding in a tryst. When he confesses this to his wife, she attempts to salvage the marriage, but then ultimately divorces him when she finds out that he's been lying about smoking.
(Side note: My cynical outlook on popular culture found it sad and instructive that a woman would forgive and overlook adultery, but overreact and divorce her spouse over a secret smoking habit. True, her character's father died of lung cancer, so there's some psychological explanation for it, but it bespoke of the culture's lassez faire attitude toward sexual promiscuity, which Lewis predicted 50 years ago, juxtaposed with the rabid rejection of cigarettes that pervades the culture. However, I can understand that for some people, it's not the act itself that they cannot condone, but the lying and prevarication that raises their hackles. Cooper was honest and forthright (mostly) about the affair, but consistently lied about smoking.)
While watching the movie, I remember thinking, "You're on a slippery slope, buddy," as Cooper flirted with Johansson and justified spending time with her, "as friends." Without alluding to When Harry Met Sally let me posit that men and women cannot be friends by themselves. That is, they can be friendly, they can spend time with each other as long as other people are around. But isolate them and temptation rears its head. Regardless, the parallels with Lewis' couple was striking to me, to see this man dabble with another woman simply because he perceived a lack in his marriage somewhere. Now, it is instructive that later in the movie we find out that the married couple had stopped having sex. The implicit message here is that men are sexual animals and that women need to continue to satisfy them sexually in order to keep them from philandering. A standup comic told a story (true or not, who knows) about how his wife stopped sleeping with him and how a gorgeous woman came up and complimented him after a show. One thing led to another, and he summarized it by saying, "Now, I'm a good dog, but you have to pet me once in a while in order to keep me on the porch!"
Well, if womens' only hold on men is their sexual appeal, then as Lewis says they will always lose to younger women since they lose their beauty as they age. Men don't have a lot of beauty to begin with and thus rely less on it to entice women, which prevents them from suffering a disadvantage as natural events take their course. A feminist might take this opportunity to rail against the base nature of males. A moralist might choose to criticize women for obsessing over their looks and attractiveness. I think that there is enough blame to spread around to both sides.
The fundamental issue at stake here is the nature of relationships between males and females. This is what the movie is about, and what the articles attempts to discern. As Lewis points out, more and more the prevailing attitude toward romance is simply to satisfy one's appetites and satiate one's lusts. And he counters this mentality bluntly:
"When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fairminded, mutually adaptable people."
And here is the fundamental point. When people enter into relationships for the purpose of satisfying their own needs and desires, the relationship is doomed. DOOMED. There is no way that another person can satisfy the need to be loved, the longing on the hearts of people for that unconditional, unstinting, unjudging, unwavering, unaltering, implacable affection and acceptance that every human being yearns for, if they examined their hearts and minds deeply enough. They need healing and restoration from the wounds and weariness of this world.
The problem with the characters in the film, with the two people in Lewis' essay, and with the mentality that is preached to all consumers of modern culture, is that they approach the relationship with selfish desires. They confuse attraction and affection with love. Attraction and affection are self-focused. They answer the question, "What can you do for me?" That is the question most people enter into relationships to answer. But this is negated before the relationship even begins! Because if both people are asking that of the other, then neither is able to fulfill that desire within themselves! It's like two people dying of thirst meeting in the desert. They see the other and exclaim, "You must have water for me! Please, for pity's sake, give me some water!" Both are in the exact same situation. But neither has what the other needs, so how can they attain it? Impossible. You cannot give what you do not have.
I have noticed a stunning flaw in most portrayals of relationships in mainstream culture, one in fact present in the movie. This movie ends, as most movies do, with several of the characters being united or reunited in loving, passionate relationships, though not the married couple. The married couple is the only couple that breaks apart, and even the illicit relationship between Cooper and Johansson is sundered. But the rest of them get together and we see their affectionate lives together. However, what is to prevent them from suffering the same fate as Connelly and Cooper? How will they avoid that gradual diminution of passion and mystery that undergirded their initial attraction? We see Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston's characters reunited and pledge to marry; what steps will they take to avoid the same failure? Because there hasn't been any reevaluation of what constitutes a strong and enduring relationship. Affleck's character was steadfastly against marriage, leading to his estrangement with Aniston. Aniston then sees the way husbands take for granted their wives' service and dedication, contrasted with Affleck's caring and consideration for her. In predictable Hollywood fashion, she renounces her determination to get married and reconciles with Affleck, who then proposes marriage to her. So they each learn to give in to the other. And this is the closest thing to love that we ever see in the film, and the single sliver of hope that one relationship will endure the storms and shoals of time. But they never verbalize it, they never express it in such a way that each can keep this in mind while they deal with the other's quirks and qualms. Their affection for each other is at its zenith, and in such throes do they make sacrifices. But will they be so humble, forgiving, and selfless in a year or five or ten?
There is almost a coldbloodedness to love, an icy determination to cleave to your spouse no matter what they do. The marriage pact is a symbol of this, a guiderail that keeps your eyes from wandering too far. Even when you experience resentment or a complete lack of affection for your mate, the vows taken before God and man (especially God) can hold you to your course. Anyone can promise the world while their blood is boiling in passion; to walk back into a room where your spouse and you just had a yelling match and you feel you were in the right but you still apologize and ask for forgiveness anyway takes a control of the will that most people don't cultivate or even understand. That is why Lewis says that successful marriages take "good people" to work. Because selfish people will only love you as long as they get what they want from you. And not a moment longer.
Obviously the moral of this story is that the more selfless you are the stronger your marriage will be, and the more you surrender your will to the Lord, the more you will be fulfilled by Him and can love and interact with your mate from the overflow of your heart, which is filled with the love of God. I don't expect to see that on any screen anytime soon. I hold out hope, though.
Lewis begins his commentary relaying a story involving a comment that a neighboring socialite made. In relation to hearing that a man had recently divorced his wife to marry a woman who had divorced her husband, this socialite said, "Well, after all, they had a right to happiness." Lewis ponders the meaning, implications and etymology of this particular phrase in various insightful and prognosticating ways. He distinguishes the concept of a right to happiness with the famous sentiment from the US Constitution, the right to the "pursuit of happiness." Without restating the entire article, which I highly recommend you peruse, the gist of what he says amounts to this: that sexual happiness (the happiness referred to by the socialite and by the husband when defending his behavior, whether they realize it or not) is transitory, based upon emotion and whim; that the pursuit of sexual expression has achieved a hitherto unparalleled position of condonement for any pernicious or ungracious behavior; and that women will always be at a disadvantage in this dynamic since they lose their sexual appeal as they age whereas men rely less on looks and beauty to attract women.
Any of you who have seen the movie I referenced at the beginning will immediately recognize the connection with Lewis' essay. For the plot of the movie is about a group of people, women and men, who are all in relationships or trying to get in relationship with someone, usually someone else from that group. Of particular interest is the subplot involving Scarlett Johansson's character and Bradley Cooper's character. Cooper is married to Jennifer Connelly in the movie, though we don't discover this for a while. The two meet in a store and converse for a while, obviously attracted to each other. Cooper's character then deflects Johansson by explaining that he's married. Instead of walking away and breaking all contact, he gives her a card and she pursues him, ultimately succeeding in a tryst. When he confesses this to his wife, she attempts to salvage the marriage, but then ultimately divorces him when she finds out that he's been lying about smoking.
(Side note: My cynical outlook on popular culture found it sad and instructive that a woman would forgive and overlook adultery, but overreact and divorce her spouse over a secret smoking habit. True, her character's father died of lung cancer, so there's some psychological explanation for it, but it bespoke of the culture's lassez faire attitude toward sexual promiscuity, which Lewis predicted 50 years ago, juxtaposed with the rabid rejection of cigarettes that pervades the culture. However, I can understand that for some people, it's not the act itself that they cannot condone, but the lying and prevarication that raises their hackles. Cooper was honest and forthright (mostly) about the affair, but consistently lied about smoking.)
While watching the movie, I remember thinking, "You're on a slippery slope, buddy," as Cooper flirted with Johansson and justified spending time with her, "as friends." Without alluding to When Harry Met Sally let me posit that men and women cannot be friends by themselves. That is, they can be friendly, they can spend time with each other as long as other people are around. But isolate them and temptation rears its head. Regardless, the parallels with Lewis' couple was striking to me, to see this man dabble with another woman simply because he perceived a lack in his marriage somewhere. Now, it is instructive that later in the movie we find out that the married couple had stopped having sex. The implicit message here is that men are sexual animals and that women need to continue to satisfy them sexually in order to keep them from philandering. A standup comic told a story (true or not, who knows) about how his wife stopped sleeping with him and how a gorgeous woman came up and complimented him after a show. One thing led to another, and he summarized it by saying, "Now, I'm a good dog, but you have to pet me once in a while in order to keep me on the porch!"
Well, if womens' only hold on men is their sexual appeal, then as Lewis says they will always lose to younger women since they lose their beauty as they age. Men don't have a lot of beauty to begin with and thus rely less on it to entice women, which prevents them from suffering a disadvantage as natural events take their course. A feminist might take this opportunity to rail against the base nature of males. A moralist might choose to criticize women for obsessing over their looks and attractiveness. I think that there is enough blame to spread around to both sides.
The fundamental issue at stake here is the nature of relationships between males and females. This is what the movie is about, and what the articles attempts to discern. As Lewis points out, more and more the prevailing attitude toward romance is simply to satisfy one's appetites and satiate one's lusts. And he counters this mentality bluntly:
"When two people achieve lasting happiness, this is not solely because they are great lovers but because they are also—I must put it crudely—good people; controlled, loyal, fairminded, mutually adaptable people."
And here is the fundamental point. When people enter into relationships for the purpose of satisfying their own needs and desires, the relationship is doomed. DOOMED. There is no way that another person can satisfy the need to be loved, the longing on the hearts of people for that unconditional, unstinting, unjudging, unwavering, unaltering, implacable affection and acceptance that every human being yearns for, if they examined their hearts and minds deeply enough. They need healing and restoration from the wounds and weariness of this world.
The problem with the characters in the film, with the two people in Lewis' essay, and with the mentality that is preached to all consumers of modern culture, is that they approach the relationship with selfish desires. They confuse attraction and affection with love. Attraction and affection are self-focused. They answer the question, "What can you do for me?" That is the question most people enter into relationships to answer. But this is negated before the relationship even begins! Because if both people are asking that of the other, then neither is able to fulfill that desire within themselves! It's like two people dying of thirst meeting in the desert. They see the other and exclaim, "You must have water for me! Please, for pity's sake, give me some water!" Both are in the exact same situation. But neither has what the other needs, so how can they attain it? Impossible. You cannot give what you do not have.
I have noticed a stunning flaw in most portrayals of relationships in mainstream culture, one in fact present in the movie. This movie ends, as most movies do, with several of the characters being united or reunited in loving, passionate relationships, though not the married couple. The married couple is the only couple that breaks apart, and even the illicit relationship between Cooper and Johansson is sundered. But the rest of them get together and we see their affectionate lives together. However, what is to prevent them from suffering the same fate as Connelly and Cooper? How will they avoid that gradual diminution of passion and mystery that undergirded their initial attraction? We see Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston's characters reunited and pledge to marry; what steps will they take to avoid the same failure? Because there hasn't been any reevaluation of what constitutes a strong and enduring relationship. Affleck's character was steadfastly against marriage, leading to his estrangement with Aniston. Aniston then sees the way husbands take for granted their wives' service and dedication, contrasted with Affleck's caring and consideration for her. In predictable Hollywood fashion, she renounces her determination to get married and reconciles with Affleck, who then proposes marriage to her. So they each learn to give in to the other. And this is the closest thing to love that we ever see in the film, and the single sliver of hope that one relationship will endure the storms and shoals of time. But they never verbalize it, they never express it in such a way that each can keep this in mind while they deal with the other's quirks and qualms. Their affection for each other is at its zenith, and in such throes do they make sacrifices. But will they be so humble, forgiving, and selfless in a year or five or ten?
There is almost a coldbloodedness to love, an icy determination to cleave to your spouse no matter what they do. The marriage pact is a symbol of this, a guiderail that keeps your eyes from wandering too far. Even when you experience resentment or a complete lack of affection for your mate, the vows taken before God and man (especially God) can hold you to your course. Anyone can promise the world while their blood is boiling in passion; to walk back into a room where your spouse and you just had a yelling match and you feel you were in the right but you still apologize and ask for forgiveness anyway takes a control of the will that most people don't cultivate or even understand. That is why Lewis says that successful marriages take "good people" to work. Because selfish people will only love you as long as they get what they want from you. And not a moment longer.
Obviously the moral of this story is that the more selfless you are the stronger your marriage will be, and the more you surrender your will to the Lord, the more you will be fulfilled by Him and can love and interact with your mate from the overflow of your heart, which is filled with the love of God. I don't expect to see that on any screen anytime soon. I hold out hope, though.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Raise Up a Child of God in the Way He Should Go...
I was meditating on the Lord as our Heavenly Father and on my relation to him as a son. You know how He has embedded analogies and likenesses in the natural world that inform and reflect upon our relationship with Him? Well, I realized that my walk with God as the Father should mirror how my relationship with my dad has changed. Read on.
When I was a child, I thought like a child, I misbehaved like a child, I was disciplined like a child, I was ignorant and selfish like a child. When I became a man, well....Let's just say that I have improved. I have a greater understanding of the world, of my own ways and means of relating to others, what behavior is generally acceptable and what should be left among the Lego's and action figures that decorate the landscape of my childhood. And a lot of this was because of my parents. They disciplined me. Corporeal punishment, or spanking for readers in Rio Linda. They saw me doing something I wasn't supposed to, or heard about something I wasn't supposed to be doing, they corrected me. They did so in love, knowing that present discomfort and wailing would reap a mature, temperate, sensible, and godly character in me for my adulthood. This goes without saying, or at least it used to. I happen to be of the opinion that if more parents spanked their kids once in a while, there would be a lot more mentally and emotionally healthy adults down the road. But that is beside my point.
So I was ruminating on some of the unfortunate things that I have experienced over the last year, and the Lord revealed to me that I was being corrected. Not that I was actively living in sin (I was, somewhat, the usual sins that we struggle with, but not rebellion) but merely that this was part of growing up. Because the Lord's ultimate goal is that I become like Him, like Jesus. Not only in abstaining from sin and dwelling on the Lord constantly, but also in how I relate to Him. Much like my dad. I have a wonderful relationship with my dad; our relationship resembles a friendship more than a parent-child dynamic. He disciplined me as a younger child so that I would grow into a man that he could have a more egalitarian rapport with. And that's the main point I'm driving at. The Lord disciplines us, corrects us, acts as the parent so that as we grow in our knowledge and love of Him, we no longer need as much correction and parenting, and can develop a mature relationship with Him. The ultimate goal is to be like Jesus, and Jesus is God, so we are to have the same relationship with the Father as He has with Jesus, the Son and the second person of the Trinity! Amazing!
It's instructive to note that as children we never liked the discipline we underwent; that was the point, in fact, to associate the behavior with the unpleasant outcome. Much the same, if we continue in our sins, even after salvation, we will bring about the discipline of the Lord, and that promises to be unpleasant. Because the Lord is not content to leave us in spiritual infancy; He wants us to be as close to peers as possible. And no person can continue to act like a child and be a balanced, healthy, and productive member of society.
Arrested Development was a TV show about the Bluth family, a wealthy family full of narcissists, self-indulged fools who live out of touch with the real world. The youngest of the adult children is Buster, who has been infantilized by his overbearing and possessive mother, and all the humor related to him is the various ways his behavior violates basic human morays and practices, not to mention common decency and common sense.
But that is how many Christians go through life, as spiritual infants; they expect everything to be done for them, they don't take responsibility for their own spiritual walk, they expect the pastor to provide all their Biblical exegesis and application, they divorce their earthly lives from their heavenly ones, and they assume that salvation was merely a means of escaping hell after death. Jesus promised that life on earth, here and now, would be animated and fulfilling through the Holy Spirit. We are to begin living in heaven even while we walk on earth. This way we won't be in Remedial Spirituality once we graduate from the world, but rather we will have a vibrant and ecstatic relationship that with culminate in finally being fully united with Christ. It's the difference between a man and woman being betrothed by their parents. If they begin exchanging letters, getting to know each other, developing an understanding of how the other thinks and feels, then when they finally meet they will immediately be able to interact on a much more intimate level. Conversely, if they never bother to get to know each other while apart, when they meet they will have to start developing the relationship from whole cloth. God wants us to begin developing the relationship while we are still "separated" by our earthly lives. (Of course, we aren't really separated, but at some level the metaphor breaks down. Take it for what it's worth.)
So, a question: Are you resisting whatever lesson and correction the Lord is putting you through? Are you developing your understanding and love of God while you have the privilege of faith? Or are you going to wait until you die before you bother to devote yourself to getting to know your Betrothed?
When I was a child, I thought like a child, I misbehaved like a child, I was disciplined like a child, I was ignorant and selfish like a child. When I became a man, well....Let's just say that I have improved. I have a greater understanding of the world, of my own ways and means of relating to others, what behavior is generally acceptable and what should be left among the Lego's and action figures that decorate the landscape of my childhood. And a lot of this was because of my parents. They disciplined me. Corporeal punishment, or spanking for readers in Rio Linda. They saw me doing something I wasn't supposed to, or heard about something I wasn't supposed to be doing, they corrected me. They did so in love, knowing that present discomfort and wailing would reap a mature, temperate, sensible, and godly character in me for my adulthood. This goes without saying, or at least it used to. I happen to be of the opinion that if more parents spanked their kids once in a while, there would be a lot more mentally and emotionally healthy adults down the road. But that is beside my point.
So I was ruminating on some of the unfortunate things that I have experienced over the last year, and the Lord revealed to me that I was being corrected. Not that I was actively living in sin (I was, somewhat, the usual sins that we struggle with, but not rebellion) but merely that this was part of growing up. Because the Lord's ultimate goal is that I become like Him, like Jesus. Not only in abstaining from sin and dwelling on the Lord constantly, but also in how I relate to Him. Much like my dad. I have a wonderful relationship with my dad; our relationship resembles a friendship more than a parent-child dynamic. He disciplined me as a younger child so that I would grow into a man that he could have a more egalitarian rapport with. And that's the main point I'm driving at. The Lord disciplines us, corrects us, acts as the parent so that as we grow in our knowledge and love of Him, we no longer need as much correction and parenting, and can develop a mature relationship with Him. The ultimate goal is to be like Jesus, and Jesus is God, so we are to have the same relationship with the Father as He has with Jesus, the Son and the second person of the Trinity! Amazing!
It's instructive to note that as children we never liked the discipline we underwent; that was the point, in fact, to associate the behavior with the unpleasant outcome. Much the same, if we continue in our sins, even after salvation, we will bring about the discipline of the Lord, and that promises to be unpleasant. Because the Lord is not content to leave us in spiritual infancy; He wants us to be as close to peers as possible. And no person can continue to act like a child and be a balanced, healthy, and productive member of society.
Arrested Development was a TV show about the Bluth family, a wealthy family full of narcissists, self-indulged fools who live out of touch with the real world. The youngest of the adult children is Buster, who has been infantilized by his overbearing and possessive mother, and all the humor related to him is the various ways his behavior violates basic human morays and practices, not to mention common decency and common sense.
But that is how many Christians go through life, as spiritual infants; they expect everything to be done for them, they don't take responsibility for their own spiritual walk, they expect the pastor to provide all their Biblical exegesis and application, they divorce their earthly lives from their heavenly ones, and they assume that salvation was merely a means of escaping hell after death. Jesus promised that life on earth, here and now, would be animated and fulfilling through the Holy Spirit. We are to begin living in heaven even while we walk on earth. This way we won't be in Remedial Spirituality once we graduate from the world, but rather we will have a vibrant and ecstatic relationship that with culminate in finally being fully united with Christ. It's the difference between a man and woman being betrothed by their parents. If they begin exchanging letters, getting to know each other, developing an understanding of how the other thinks and feels, then when they finally meet they will immediately be able to interact on a much more intimate level. Conversely, if they never bother to get to know each other while apart, when they meet they will have to start developing the relationship from whole cloth. God wants us to begin developing the relationship while we are still "separated" by our earthly lives. (Of course, we aren't really separated, but at some level the metaphor breaks down. Take it for what it's worth.)
So, a question: Are you resisting whatever lesson and correction the Lord is putting you through? Are you developing your understanding and love of God while you have the privilege of faith? Or are you going to wait until you die before you bother to devote yourself to getting to know your Betrothed?
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Regressive Revelation
Over the last year the Lord has been taking things away from me. First He took away my job when I got fired from not one but two jobs within 6 weeks of each other. This was the first time I ever got terminated from a job, and it happened twice! Needless to say I was distraught. He has since seen fit not to send me another opportunity besides a part time gig teaching at my uncle’s Christian school. This is not enough to pay the bills and since I’m broke I’ve had to rely on other people to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach at times. My housemate has had to pay more than half of the rent/bills and this has led to increased tension between us. I feel unwelcome in my own house, so that serenity of sanctuary has been taken also.
I had been attending a bible study with two other guys from my church in KC, which was a great time of fellowship and friendship. We would hang out once every other week or so to play games in addition to the weekly meeting. It was a good group, relaxed and playful yet serious and thoughtful during small group discussions of The Ragamuffin Gospel. That ended in January, and I’ve only hung out with them once or twice since. The Lord removed that from my life as well.
And finally, my body is breaking down at an alarming rate. First, my overall weight is far too high and I have been trying unsuccessfully to lose weight for several years now. This has contributed to chronic back problems and gout. Whether or not this underlying condition led to some of the more recent and more debilitating maladies is unclear, though it certainly hasn’t helped matters. In February I walked 18 holes of golf and my big toe got red and painful, infected in fact. It remained so until my sister’s fiancée volunteered to cut open my toe and snip off the ingrown toenail. This he did in my parents’ basement after giving me two prescription painkillers, which didn’t kick in until halfway through the procedure. He did both sides of the toenail and cut a goodly portion of each. Unfortunately the toe remained infected and so I had to visit a foot doctor who gave me 3 painful numbing shots and cut off a third of the toenail to get out the ingrown part. She gave me antibiotics which I took, but the toe is still slightly red and painful, which suggests that the infection isn’t gone or that the toenail is ingrown on the other side and therefore requires more surgery.
A few weeks ago, however, I began to do exercises, trying to work myself into golf shape, which would allow me to walk 18 holes of golf without collapsing in pain, and thereby to save some money and get some exercise.
This involves an exercise called Hindu Squat, where you lower yourself down on your haunches repeatedly. I had been practicing this for the last few weeks before the toe flared up, but had gone easy on walking and favored the affected left leg when walking. I did a set of 100 on Wednesday and then 120 on Thursday, a new record. Friday I got up with pain in my left knee over the kneecap. It wasn’t too bad, just when I bent the knee so I did 60 squats and played golf (in a cart). I hobbled around the course, and by bedtime the knee was agonizing. I could not bend the knee without excruciating pain.
I called my parents and my dad came down to assess the situation. I could not bend the knee enough to get in and out of my car, so we decided I should return to Kirksville with him and get some treatment and medical opinion from a family friend and fellow church member Michael Lockwood. Dr. Lockwood diagnosed bursitis, an inflammation of the bursa sac, and recommended rest, elevation, ice, and compression. He gave me a knee brace and some special anti inflammatory pills from India. For the next week I spent my days with my knee bound and iced and raised. As a consequence of this, my other knee also began to hurt, as did my Achilles tendon. These problems are mostly gone, though I am leary of their return especially since…
I have recently had the other edge of the left toenail removed, requiring more painful injections and ministrations. Hopefully this will be the final requirement to get this toe healthy, though the other big toe is starting to show signs of infection. I’m hoping that this will go away with another round of antibiotics.
On the night where the knee began to hurt, I lay in bed and silently screamed at God. I complained and questioned, comparing my lot to Job, one degradation after another. First the livelihood and prosperity is removed, then the physical health is attacked. Why?, I wondered, fully cognizant of the famous response God gives when He answers Job’s pleas with some pointed questions of His own. When my dad came down for that weekend, we had dinner at my uncle’s house, and both my uncle and my dad prayed over me. I was overwhelmed with emotion, physically and mentally wrung out, suffering from spiritual vertigo. The presence of the Lord was palpable, the empathy was like a swirling cloud blocking out my sense of outrage. Comfort sprung up from the desert of my blistered spirit.
Then the Lord started healing me.
First He healed my leg, my knee. The knee is mostly healed, though still sore occasionally when I squat. The leg and other knee are feeling fine. The toe is healing nicely from the first surgery and should be fully restored thanks to the most recent surgery. I even received a word from the Lord about my weight loss struggles.
That’s the physical. The material side has radically changed as well. I got a job teaching at a vocational technical college here in Kansas City for a month, starting May 11. This may turn into a full time job in the fall. I may also have a line on a job teaching high school literature at a Christian school in Indianapolis, thanks to a friend’s recommendation.
Also, when I was up in Kirksville over Easter because of my knee, a cousin of mine came into town to visit her brother. She works at a Christian publishing company in Chicago, Tyndale House, and we had a long talk about the industry, among other things. I have been interested in a job in the publishing industry for about a decade; I’ve sent myriad applications only to be rebuffed time and again. But my cousin said there might be an internship over the summer I might capitalize on. So a dream of mine might be realized thanks to a connection through my cousin.
Now, if not for my knee, I wouldn’t have been in Kirksville to visit with my cousin, so that was one divine appointment that came out of the experience. But more than that was the absolute stripping of everything I rely on, all my crutches and illusions. I was completely aware of the fragility of my life, my lifestyle, the well-being of my body. I had two options: to spiral into depression, blaming God for my woes and self-destruction or self-pitying (which was my initial reaction, that first night of the bursitis); or to acknowledge that I am unable to even keep my body from breaking down on me, and throwing myself completely on the grace and mercy of God, trusting Him to live through me, to handle my pain (not remove it) for me, and to enable me to praise Him and thank Him in the process. Thanks to my recent reading of Bill Gilham’s excellent book What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity, I submitted myself to Him and said “This body is Yours, Lord. Do with it what You will. Help me to endure with You and through You.”
Two Sunday’s ago, a guest speaker at my church New Day gave an excellent sermon on the Ethiopian eunuch and his encounter with Phillip. Steve Carpenter, the speaker, illustrated the preperation of the Ethiopian for that encounter with Phillip, the trials, disappointments, and disillusions that he had suffered up until that moment. He talked about the passage of Scripture the man was reading being an exact foretelling of Jesus, and how the rest of the book of Isaiah was full of passages and allusions directly applicable to that Ethiopian eunuch. It was a brilliant and wonderful explanation of the provision of God, the intricate and intimate knowledge and caring that God wrought to bring the African eunuch to the point where He could use him, convert him. You must go to newdaykc.org and download the sermon, it’s marvelous. But this really resonated with me and my circumstances, giving me hope that whatever else happens, the Lord is using this suffering and drought to bring me to the point where when He speaks I will be listening, I will be able to answer in the manner that pleases Him. And I think that’s happening. I don’t know what the future holds, what more I’ll go through in dealing with physical and vocational challenges, but my spirit has been bouyed by the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, and that He will work out my salvation through me, in spite of and along with my own actions.
I close with this poem that has struck me over and over again recently.
GOD KNOWS WHAT HE’S ABOUT
When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!
How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And with every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out —
God knows what He’s about.
—Author Unknown
Indeed.
I had been attending a bible study with two other guys from my church in KC, which was a great time of fellowship and friendship. We would hang out once every other week or so to play games in addition to the weekly meeting. It was a good group, relaxed and playful yet serious and thoughtful during small group discussions of The Ragamuffin Gospel. That ended in January, and I’ve only hung out with them once or twice since. The Lord removed that from my life as well.
And finally, my body is breaking down at an alarming rate. First, my overall weight is far too high and I have been trying unsuccessfully to lose weight for several years now. This has contributed to chronic back problems and gout. Whether or not this underlying condition led to some of the more recent and more debilitating maladies is unclear, though it certainly hasn’t helped matters. In February I walked 18 holes of golf and my big toe got red and painful, infected in fact. It remained so until my sister’s fiancée volunteered to cut open my toe and snip off the ingrown toenail. This he did in my parents’ basement after giving me two prescription painkillers, which didn’t kick in until halfway through the procedure. He did both sides of the toenail and cut a goodly portion of each. Unfortunately the toe remained infected and so I had to visit a foot doctor who gave me 3 painful numbing shots and cut off a third of the toenail to get out the ingrown part. She gave me antibiotics which I took, but the toe is still slightly red and painful, which suggests that the infection isn’t gone or that the toenail is ingrown on the other side and therefore requires more surgery.
A few weeks ago, however, I began to do exercises, trying to work myself into golf shape, which would allow me to walk 18 holes of golf without collapsing in pain, and thereby to save some money and get some exercise.
This involves an exercise called Hindu Squat, where you lower yourself down on your haunches repeatedly. I had been practicing this for the last few weeks before the toe flared up, but had gone easy on walking and favored the affected left leg when walking. I did a set of 100 on Wednesday and then 120 on Thursday, a new record. Friday I got up with pain in my left knee over the kneecap. It wasn’t too bad, just when I bent the knee so I did 60 squats and played golf (in a cart). I hobbled around the course, and by bedtime the knee was agonizing. I could not bend the knee without excruciating pain.
I called my parents and my dad came down to assess the situation. I could not bend the knee enough to get in and out of my car, so we decided I should return to Kirksville with him and get some treatment and medical opinion from a family friend and fellow church member Michael Lockwood. Dr. Lockwood diagnosed bursitis, an inflammation of the bursa sac, and recommended rest, elevation, ice, and compression. He gave me a knee brace and some special anti inflammatory pills from India. For the next week I spent my days with my knee bound and iced and raised. As a consequence of this, my other knee also began to hurt, as did my Achilles tendon. These problems are mostly gone, though I am leary of their return especially since…
I have recently had the other edge of the left toenail removed, requiring more painful injections and ministrations. Hopefully this will be the final requirement to get this toe healthy, though the other big toe is starting to show signs of infection. I’m hoping that this will go away with another round of antibiotics.
On the night where the knee began to hurt, I lay in bed and silently screamed at God. I complained and questioned, comparing my lot to Job, one degradation after another. First the livelihood and prosperity is removed, then the physical health is attacked. Why?, I wondered, fully cognizant of the famous response God gives when He answers Job’s pleas with some pointed questions of His own. When my dad came down for that weekend, we had dinner at my uncle’s house, and both my uncle and my dad prayed over me. I was overwhelmed with emotion, physically and mentally wrung out, suffering from spiritual vertigo. The presence of the Lord was palpable, the empathy was like a swirling cloud blocking out my sense of outrage. Comfort sprung up from the desert of my blistered spirit.
Then the Lord started healing me.
First He healed my leg, my knee. The knee is mostly healed, though still sore occasionally when I squat. The leg and other knee are feeling fine. The toe is healing nicely from the first surgery and should be fully restored thanks to the most recent surgery. I even received a word from the Lord about my weight loss struggles.
That’s the physical. The material side has radically changed as well. I got a job teaching at a vocational technical college here in Kansas City for a month, starting May 11. This may turn into a full time job in the fall. I may also have a line on a job teaching high school literature at a Christian school in Indianapolis, thanks to a friend’s recommendation.
Also, when I was up in Kirksville over Easter because of my knee, a cousin of mine came into town to visit her brother. She works at a Christian publishing company in Chicago, Tyndale House, and we had a long talk about the industry, among other things. I have been interested in a job in the publishing industry for about a decade; I’ve sent myriad applications only to be rebuffed time and again. But my cousin said there might be an internship over the summer I might capitalize on. So a dream of mine might be realized thanks to a connection through my cousin.
Now, if not for my knee, I wouldn’t have been in Kirksville to visit with my cousin, so that was one divine appointment that came out of the experience. But more than that was the absolute stripping of everything I rely on, all my crutches and illusions. I was completely aware of the fragility of my life, my lifestyle, the well-being of my body. I had two options: to spiral into depression, blaming God for my woes and self-destruction or self-pitying (which was my initial reaction, that first night of the bursitis); or to acknowledge that I am unable to even keep my body from breaking down on me, and throwing myself completely on the grace and mercy of God, trusting Him to live through me, to handle my pain (not remove it) for me, and to enable me to praise Him and thank Him in the process. Thanks to my recent reading of Bill Gilham’s excellent book What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity, I submitted myself to Him and said “This body is Yours, Lord. Do with it what You will. Help me to endure with You and through You.”
Two Sunday’s ago, a guest speaker at my church New Day gave an excellent sermon on the Ethiopian eunuch and his encounter with Phillip. Steve Carpenter, the speaker, illustrated the preperation of the Ethiopian for that encounter with Phillip, the trials, disappointments, and disillusions that he had suffered up until that moment. He talked about the passage of Scripture the man was reading being an exact foretelling of Jesus, and how the rest of the book of Isaiah was full of passages and allusions directly applicable to that Ethiopian eunuch. It was a brilliant and wonderful explanation of the provision of God, the intricate and intimate knowledge and caring that God wrought to bring the African eunuch to the point where He could use him, convert him. You must go to newdaykc.org and download the sermon, it’s marvelous. But this really resonated with me and my circumstances, giving me hope that whatever else happens, the Lord is using this suffering and drought to bring me to the point where when He speaks I will be listening, I will be able to answer in the manner that pleases Him. And I think that’s happening. I don’t know what the future holds, what more I’ll go through in dealing with physical and vocational challenges, but my spirit has been bouyed by the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, and that He will work out my salvation through me, in spite of and along with my own actions.
I close with this poem that has struck me over and over again recently.
GOD KNOWS WHAT HE’S ABOUT
When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!
How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And with every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out —
God knows what He’s about.
—Author Unknown
Indeed.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Boy Like Me, Man Like You
I was reading in Bill Gilhams’s book What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity, a lengthy title to a stellar read (so far), and he was hammering away at his premise, the main premise of this book and the other one I read Lifetime Guarantee: that Jesus offers us not only salvation and redemption, but an actual life; that the life he lived qualified him for the death he died, and the death he died qualifies us for the life he lives, that he gave his life for us, to give his life to us, to live his life through us. And he was talking about the literal indwelling of Christ in us, that we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices in the most basic sense, namely, that as long as we live we are to sacrifice ourselves to Jesus on a continual and unstoppable basis. And in the Spirit of that Ian Thomas quote, I was mulling over how Jesus can live through me at this particular point in my life.
Here I am, at loose ends, struggling with a cornucopia of difficulties ranging from my health and prospectus for future health, to my job and prospectus for future vocation, to my complete lack of a social life and the bleak prospectus of ever finding a woman who could stand me. Oh, yes. I forgot my lack of self esteem. Thank you for pointing that out.
So I was pondering this and thinking about what my life would look like if Christ was actually living through me. That is, how it would affect me on a daily basis. How would it affect my job hunt, the various teaching jobs I would like. And how would it affect how I deal with my roommate, the relationship with whom no small amount of tension has accumulated. And how it would affect my teaching abilities and the way I handle my class, in particular one student whom I can only describe as willfully ignorant and stubborn and refuses to follow the simplest of directions or to put forth a bare minimum of effort. And how it would affect my desire and determination (lack thereof) to lose weight and become a healthier person. And I suppose I must also consider how it would affect my pleasures, the sort of things I watch on TV, the amount of TV I watch, the books I read and how much, the movies I rent, the time I spend frivolously playing Hearts during the day, and the obsession I have with the game of golf. Not, as you might understand, how Christ in me would affect my spiritual stance on these matters per se, though certainly the spirit is inextricably linked to the mind and body, and can therefore affect our behavior. This is a universal truth; otherwise the promise Gilham and Thomas and my dad harp on, the message of liberation and abundant life they derive from the Gospel and the New Testament, would be meaningless since our spiritual resurrection would have no bearing on our mortal lives. And this misapprehension is the very thing they are railing against. No, I was pondering how Christ living through me would affect these things on a practical, real, measurable way. How that spiritual transformation, the evidence of Christ in me, would help me find a job or a girl or drop twenty pounds.
This is by no means a new revelation to me. But it struck me that Jesus spent 30 years on Earth (as far as we know) before he embarked on his mission. So I was wondering: Did Jesus ever get frustrated with the wait? Did he ever wonder what exactly the Father was going to do with him and through him for the people of Israel? Did he listen to his father’s clients or the local priests rant about the Romans and wonder whether he would drive them out? Did he ever lose faith or doubt about his purpose, if only for a moment? Did he ever wonder, What is God’s plan for my life?
By these questions I don’t mean to throw into question the divinity of Christ. But I do think that he gave up his absolute knowledge of time when he became a man. Did he retain the course of his own life, seeing the miracles he would perform, the people he would encounter, the betrayals he would suffer, the death and torment he would endure, and the resurrection he would undergo? Or did the Father reveal things only when Jesus needed to know them, as He seems to do with us? Jesus walked in complete reliance on the Father, he claimed, doing nothing he didn’t see his Father do. And we are to live the life of Jesus! We are to do the things Jesus did! Isn’t that what it means that Jesus lives through us? Or at least, potentially what it might mean? Not that we will walk on water and calm angry seas with a word, necessarily, but that we might? Jesus did, and he wants to live his life through us, so it might be on the table, no?
More to the point, however, I was meditating on the mentality of Jesus as he passed his twenties, as he saw his contemporaries settle down, marry, start families, begin to ascend the social ladder. Did he rebuff other families’ advances to marry him off to their daughters? Did his parents try to persuade him to embrace his trade? Did they know even then that his would be a life lived out of joint with the rest of the world, that he would never call Nazareth home or marry or become a member of society? And did he ever sit in his room after the seventeenth marriage proposal he turned down, coming on his twenty-ninth birthday, and wonder, When will my purpose begin to take place? When will my true Father begin to use me? When will I fulfill my destiny?
I want to know, because it says somewhere that he can sympathize with us because he went through the things we go through. Hebrews I think. Anyway, sometimes Jesus seems as far away as the Father. Like a perfect son who always pleases his father and meets expectations naturally arouses jealousy in his brothers for a multiplicity of reasons, not the least of which that they know he’s doing things right and thereby convicting them of all the things they’re doing wrong. I was the good son, well-behaved and conscientious to my parents, and so my sisters regarded me as our parents’ favorites for the simple fact that the parents berated and punished me less than them (my sisters). The nail(s) that stick up get hammered down, and I realized early on the benefits of the path of least resistance. Not out of any altruistic desire to please my parents and by proxy God, but rather to avoid spankings. I let my sisters battle each other, and learned to play the peacemaker, another gold star in my column of self-worth. And they resented me for it. They still do, to one degree or another. And so I was apart from them in their eyes. I couldn’t commiserate when they got treated harshly and (in their eyes) unfairly. And I think I regard Jesus in such a light at times. How could he know how hard it is to overcome temptation? He never sinned! He was God! He started out without the seed of Adam in him. Head start! No fair! Yeah, sure, Jesus, easy for you to say “be perfect like how I am perfect,” don’t you know how infuriating that sounds? Like it's easy, you just have to want it? Like perfection is a choice I can make and everything else will be gravy? All the more frustrating when I fail, and that constant reminder of my failure is what can drive a wedge between me and Jesus. How could he possibly understand what it’s like to be tossed in the gale winds of life, struggling toward the promise of light and shelter, not knowing if the directions scratched in the dirt are even correct or if I’m even following them right, if I understood them in the first place?
Did Jesus ever have to go job hunting? Did he worry about his health or looks? You get the idea. As you can tell, my faith needs some work. Or maybe not. After all, I’m not going to abandon it, I’m going to persevere, and that’s what Jesus wants, right? But does he want dogged effort or helpless surrender? And if surrender then how can I be sure that he…
O wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
But you see my predicament.
Don't you?
Here I am, at loose ends, struggling with a cornucopia of difficulties ranging from my health and prospectus for future health, to my job and prospectus for future vocation, to my complete lack of a social life and the bleak prospectus of ever finding a woman who could stand me. Oh, yes. I forgot my lack of self esteem. Thank you for pointing that out.
So I was pondering this and thinking about what my life would look like if Christ was actually living through me. That is, how it would affect me on a daily basis. How would it affect my job hunt, the various teaching jobs I would like. And how would it affect how I deal with my roommate, the relationship with whom no small amount of tension has accumulated. And how it would affect my teaching abilities and the way I handle my class, in particular one student whom I can only describe as willfully ignorant and stubborn and refuses to follow the simplest of directions or to put forth a bare minimum of effort. And how it would affect my desire and determination (lack thereof) to lose weight and become a healthier person. And I suppose I must also consider how it would affect my pleasures, the sort of things I watch on TV, the amount of TV I watch, the books I read and how much, the movies I rent, the time I spend frivolously playing Hearts during the day, and the obsession I have with the game of golf. Not, as you might understand, how Christ in me would affect my spiritual stance on these matters per se, though certainly the spirit is inextricably linked to the mind and body, and can therefore affect our behavior. This is a universal truth; otherwise the promise Gilham and Thomas and my dad harp on, the message of liberation and abundant life they derive from the Gospel and the New Testament, would be meaningless since our spiritual resurrection would have no bearing on our mortal lives. And this misapprehension is the very thing they are railing against. No, I was pondering how Christ living through me would affect these things on a practical, real, measurable way. How that spiritual transformation, the evidence of Christ in me, would help me find a job or a girl or drop twenty pounds.
This is by no means a new revelation to me. But it struck me that Jesus spent 30 years on Earth (as far as we know) before he embarked on his mission. So I was wondering: Did Jesus ever get frustrated with the wait? Did he ever wonder what exactly the Father was going to do with him and through him for the people of Israel? Did he listen to his father’s clients or the local priests rant about the Romans and wonder whether he would drive them out? Did he ever lose faith or doubt about his purpose, if only for a moment? Did he ever wonder, What is God’s plan for my life?
By these questions I don’t mean to throw into question the divinity of Christ. But I do think that he gave up his absolute knowledge of time when he became a man. Did he retain the course of his own life, seeing the miracles he would perform, the people he would encounter, the betrayals he would suffer, the death and torment he would endure, and the resurrection he would undergo? Or did the Father reveal things only when Jesus needed to know them, as He seems to do with us? Jesus walked in complete reliance on the Father, he claimed, doing nothing he didn’t see his Father do. And we are to live the life of Jesus! We are to do the things Jesus did! Isn’t that what it means that Jesus lives through us? Or at least, potentially what it might mean? Not that we will walk on water and calm angry seas with a word, necessarily, but that we might? Jesus did, and he wants to live his life through us, so it might be on the table, no?
More to the point, however, I was meditating on the mentality of Jesus as he passed his twenties, as he saw his contemporaries settle down, marry, start families, begin to ascend the social ladder. Did he rebuff other families’ advances to marry him off to their daughters? Did his parents try to persuade him to embrace his trade? Did they know even then that his would be a life lived out of joint with the rest of the world, that he would never call Nazareth home or marry or become a member of society? And did he ever sit in his room after the seventeenth marriage proposal he turned down, coming on his twenty-ninth birthday, and wonder, When will my purpose begin to take place? When will my true Father begin to use me? When will I fulfill my destiny?
I want to know, because it says somewhere that he can sympathize with us because he went through the things we go through. Hebrews I think. Anyway, sometimes Jesus seems as far away as the Father. Like a perfect son who always pleases his father and meets expectations naturally arouses jealousy in his brothers for a multiplicity of reasons, not the least of which that they know he’s doing things right and thereby convicting them of all the things they’re doing wrong. I was the good son, well-behaved and conscientious to my parents, and so my sisters regarded me as our parents’ favorites for the simple fact that the parents berated and punished me less than them (my sisters). The nail(s) that stick up get hammered down, and I realized early on the benefits of the path of least resistance. Not out of any altruistic desire to please my parents and by proxy God, but rather to avoid spankings. I let my sisters battle each other, and learned to play the peacemaker, another gold star in my column of self-worth. And they resented me for it. They still do, to one degree or another. And so I was apart from them in their eyes. I couldn’t commiserate when they got treated harshly and (in their eyes) unfairly. And I think I regard Jesus in such a light at times. How could he know how hard it is to overcome temptation? He never sinned! He was God! He started out without the seed of Adam in him. Head start! No fair! Yeah, sure, Jesus, easy for you to say “be perfect like how I am perfect,” don’t you know how infuriating that sounds? Like it's easy, you just have to want it? Like perfection is a choice I can make and everything else will be gravy? All the more frustrating when I fail, and that constant reminder of my failure is what can drive a wedge between me and Jesus. How could he possibly understand what it’s like to be tossed in the gale winds of life, struggling toward the promise of light and shelter, not knowing if the directions scratched in the dirt are even correct or if I’m even following them right, if I understood them in the first place?
Did Jesus ever have to go job hunting? Did he worry about his health or looks? You get the idea. As you can tell, my faith needs some work. Or maybe not. After all, I’m not going to abandon it, I’m going to persevere, and that’s what Jesus wants, right? But does he want dogged effort or helpless surrender? And if surrender then how can I be sure that he…
O wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
But you see my predicament.
Don't you?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Childish
Childish
I saw a child today
She in constant motion
Jumping up and down
As if the world were her springboard.
She looked out a window
Then surveyed the restaurant
Searching for distraction
A way to sensible the world.
I found myself melancholy
Wishing I were a child.
Pure and inquisitive
Selfish and unaware
Dependent and awestruck
Rambunctious and recalcitrant.
Was I ever so childish?
When did I lose my wonder?
When did I stop looking out windows
For the vistas they contained?
When did I cease to jump
With the quivering excitement,
The joy of experience,
The springboard of life,
To dive into horizons,
To ignore myself
Because the world was more
Interesting?
Would I surrender my wealth
Of experience for a chance
To return to the days of Halcyon?
She looked at me as she left.
I lowered my eyes
As I would in the presence
Of a higher order of being,
Ashamed of my tepid
Nibbling on the edges
Of life’s broad smorgasbord
Of wonder.
My hunger sated, I still
Felt strangely empty.
Drained,
Like a leaky bucket.
She looked satisfied.
And I envied her.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Book Review: Peace Like a River
I have long been troubled by what I have perceived to be a sad lack of good fiction from a Christian perspective. At least, modern fiction. I’ve read a great many novels written since the turn of the century (19th , that is) and most come off as sermons, allegories, or fairy tales. Do not misunderstand me. I am not degrading great works of Christian fiction whole-cloth. I return to the works of C. S. Lewis with the same love and devotion of a pampered pet to its loving master, fully confident of quality and Christ in the details. There are other wonderful examples I could name, and even some of the contemporary works aren’t bad, per se. But not a work that doesn’t invoke angels and demons, where the forces of God and Lucifer square off over some poor soul’s plight or some critical issue and event upon which the fates of nations or multitudes turn. Or, a lush and tender return to pastoral times involving figures of Biblical or Christian traditions. The works of Orson Scott Card come to mind. And though I’ve not yet read them, I imagine George MacDonald’s forays into this kind of thing are much the same.
As is becoming painfully apparent to you, my experiences and therefore authority to make such a sweeping judgement on the state of contemporary Christian fiction is woefully inadequate. However, it is true that having read works like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, or Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, or sundry Hemmingway or Orwell, Borges or Gracia Marquez, a powerful and poignant portrait of life as told by a Christian never crossed my path. I would finish a masterpiece like Steinbeck’s, my spirit heavy with the tragedy of life, only marginally buoyed by whatever scraps of hope could be found in the “indomitable spirit of Man,” and bemoan that such events would take place even in fiction without the acknowledgment of God other than as an absent landlord or obtuse puppeteer. When, O Lord, will someone write such a story with You in it? I’d wonder. Well, if no one else is going to, I’ll take up the task.
I have long regarded it as my job to write such a novel that smacks of verisimilitude, that an atheist lit professor could have their students read in class and not bat an eyelash about the God parts. In short, a tale of real events that happened in which the Lord plays a part. The lack demanded redress, and I’d have to do it. And the Lord has once again set me straight, because it’s already been written. It’s by Leif Enger and it’s called Peace Like A River.
And it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read.
And it’s even better because of the God parts.
I won’t go into the details, because then why would you have to read it, right? Suffice to say it’s about a family in North Dakota in the 1960’s. And it’s a dandy of a read. The narrative is tight, the prose is flowery the same way flowers are (that is, their blossoms stretch to the sky delighting the eye with their beauty while their roots remain firmly in the earth; not incidentally, the better the earth the more healthy and glorious the flower. I think that’s a pretty standard condition for anything in life); the events are at times hilarious, hateful, heartwrenching, hopeful, and heartwarming. The characters are wonderfully flawed and real and dense (their characteristics, not their intelligence). Good things happen to bad people, bad things to good people, and nothing happens without reason even if that reason isn’t ever explained. There are periods of stillness and sorrow, of adventure and action, of pathos and pain, of anxiety and uncertainty, of hope and despair. All this to say, it’s just like Life. Which the best fiction is.
While I was reading it, devouring it too quickly as I do with every good thing the Lord blesses me with, I was reminded of a novel called One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garbiel Garcia Marquez which I read for my Latin American Lit class in grad school. That book has become the standard for a particular study of literature known as Magical Realism, which basically means there are events in the story that are beyond the realm of physical possibility, yet no one seems too put out by it. “These things happen,” would be the characters’ reply to inquiries about the viability of such events, like a rivulet of blood flowing around street corners and up stair steps to bring news of a murder. The person receiving the message isn’t concerned with how such a thing could happen as much as that someone has been murdered. It sounds like sloppy storytelling, I know, but it’s intentional (mostly), though what the intention is is anyone’s guess.
Things happen in Peace Like A River that contradict reality. However, they are attributed to God as miracles of faith rather than just What Happens. Does this change their character? Would they be considered Magical Realism in a literary sense? As a Christian I believe in miracles, that God does do things that can’t happen without His direct intervention. Now, obviously this is a work of fiction; the things in here didn’t really happen (as far as I know; the author makes no such claim). But they could happen, if you believe in God, the God of the Bible. So does that make them not Magical Realism, because they could happen. Whereas in Magical Realism, it’s understood that the author isn’t positing the events as being theoretically possible under the right circumstances. Then again, most of them don’t involve God in any big way, so it’s understandable.
Wait, you may be saying, You LIAR! You led off this longwinded review by saying you were looking for a story that didn’t rely on the supernatural in the narrative! You’ve been leading us down the primrose path (an expression I’m curious about. Where is this primrose path and what exactly lies at the end of it? What other path is one supposed to take? How did this expression come to be? Does it go back to Testament times and the straight, narrow, and tough road that leads to Salvation vs. the wide, smooth, and easy road leading to Destruction? Hmmm…). Where was I? Right, the indignation. Well, yes, that was a complaint of mine, and I’ve thought about it. And the thing about this novel is that the miraculous does occur, and sometimes it’s beneficial to the protagonists, but more often than not it isn’t, at least, not directly. It’s more of an expression of the Lord working through people. And this, again, is what life in Christ is supposed to be like, right? Not always casting out demons or healing a terminal cancer patient, but miracles that don’t always benefit us or even appear miraculous, that sometimes seem downright pernicious and perplexing! God thwarts our desire for our good, and He uses us against our wishes more often than not, simply because our wishes and His aren’t in harmony. And 80% of the time we don’t even realize when God’s hand is directing us overtly because we’re too focused on ourselves to see it. And when the results aren’t to our liking, we sulk and pout and snarl at God for not giving us what we want. And miss what He’s doing to us and through us and for us. This is real life. How many miracles I’ve missed over the reason would probably floor me. But you rejoice when the Lord reveals them to you and humbly say Thank you and vow not to be so mulish in the future. Which lasts all of a day.
Also, there’s a smattering of poetry in here, of an archaic and delightful flavor that brings a smile to my face. And the context of it is wonderful too.
There are so many things about this book that I love. I can’t go into further detail because then I’d be rehashing the book and you’d enjoy it more when Enger tells it. So just read it.
A friend and classmate of mine named Jim Wentworth once consoled me in a bar not to be too impatient about my writing. He told me you have to live and build up experiences before you can write about them, which made an awful lot of sense to me. In a way, a writer is always doing research since he writes from his own experience. My problem is my reticence to experience much. But I’m learning patience, a lesson which by its very nature takes a while and like most skills is basically acquired by practicing it. You learn to be patient by being patient, and it’s always tough at first when learning anything. I’m also learning boldness, though that lesson isn’t going as well as I’d like. All this to say that I feel like the narrator quite a lot at times, even though he writes about his experiences as an eleven-year-old. What does that say about me, eh?
I really cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you like to read, if you like Jesus, if you like to experience a good story, if you’re just looking for something to kill time, you can’t go wrong with this book. I have to thank Mr. Enger for writing such a wonderful novel. I have to thank my big sister Abigail for insisting that I read it. And I have to thank the Lord for inspiring such a wonderful book. And for everything else. Like the concept of reading and literature in the first place.
As is becoming painfully apparent to you, my experiences and therefore authority to make such a sweeping judgement on the state of contemporary Christian fiction is woefully inadequate. However, it is true that having read works like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, or Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, or sundry Hemmingway or Orwell, Borges or Gracia Marquez, a powerful and poignant portrait of life as told by a Christian never crossed my path. I would finish a masterpiece like Steinbeck’s, my spirit heavy with the tragedy of life, only marginally buoyed by whatever scraps of hope could be found in the “indomitable spirit of Man,” and bemoan that such events would take place even in fiction without the acknowledgment of God other than as an absent landlord or obtuse puppeteer. When, O Lord, will someone write such a story with You in it? I’d wonder. Well, if no one else is going to, I’ll take up the task.
I have long regarded it as my job to write such a novel that smacks of verisimilitude, that an atheist lit professor could have their students read in class and not bat an eyelash about the God parts. In short, a tale of real events that happened in which the Lord plays a part. The lack demanded redress, and I’d have to do it. And the Lord has once again set me straight, because it’s already been written. It’s by Leif Enger and it’s called Peace Like A River.
And it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read.
And it’s even better because of the God parts.
I won’t go into the details, because then why would you have to read it, right? Suffice to say it’s about a family in North Dakota in the 1960’s. And it’s a dandy of a read. The narrative is tight, the prose is flowery the same way flowers are (that is, their blossoms stretch to the sky delighting the eye with their beauty while their roots remain firmly in the earth; not incidentally, the better the earth the more healthy and glorious the flower. I think that’s a pretty standard condition for anything in life); the events are at times hilarious, hateful, heartwrenching, hopeful, and heartwarming. The characters are wonderfully flawed and real and dense (their characteristics, not their intelligence). Good things happen to bad people, bad things to good people, and nothing happens without reason even if that reason isn’t ever explained. There are periods of stillness and sorrow, of adventure and action, of pathos and pain, of anxiety and uncertainty, of hope and despair. All this to say, it’s just like Life. Which the best fiction is.
While I was reading it, devouring it too quickly as I do with every good thing the Lord blesses me with, I was reminded of a novel called One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garbiel Garcia Marquez which I read for my Latin American Lit class in grad school. That book has become the standard for a particular study of literature known as Magical Realism, which basically means there are events in the story that are beyond the realm of physical possibility, yet no one seems too put out by it. “These things happen,” would be the characters’ reply to inquiries about the viability of such events, like a rivulet of blood flowing around street corners and up stair steps to bring news of a murder. The person receiving the message isn’t concerned with how such a thing could happen as much as that someone has been murdered. It sounds like sloppy storytelling, I know, but it’s intentional (mostly), though what the intention is is anyone’s guess.
Things happen in Peace Like A River that contradict reality. However, they are attributed to God as miracles of faith rather than just What Happens. Does this change their character? Would they be considered Magical Realism in a literary sense? As a Christian I believe in miracles, that God does do things that can’t happen without His direct intervention. Now, obviously this is a work of fiction; the things in here didn’t really happen (as far as I know; the author makes no such claim). But they could happen, if you believe in God, the God of the Bible. So does that make them not Magical Realism, because they could happen. Whereas in Magical Realism, it’s understood that the author isn’t positing the events as being theoretically possible under the right circumstances. Then again, most of them don’t involve God in any big way, so it’s understandable.
Wait, you may be saying, You LIAR! You led off this longwinded review by saying you were looking for a story that didn’t rely on the supernatural in the narrative! You’ve been leading us down the primrose path (an expression I’m curious about. Where is this primrose path and what exactly lies at the end of it? What other path is one supposed to take? How did this expression come to be? Does it go back to Testament times and the straight, narrow, and tough road that leads to Salvation vs. the wide, smooth, and easy road leading to Destruction? Hmmm…). Where was I? Right, the indignation. Well, yes, that was a complaint of mine, and I’ve thought about it. And the thing about this novel is that the miraculous does occur, and sometimes it’s beneficial to the protagonists, but more often than not it isn’t, at least, not directly. It’s more of an expression of the Lord working through people. And this, again, is what life in Christ is supposed to be like, right? Not always casting out demons or healing a terminal cancer patient, but miracles that don’t always benefit us or even appear miraculous, that sometimes seem downright pernicious and perplexing! God thwarts our desire for our good, and He uses us against our wishes more often than not, simply because our wishes and His aren’t in harmony. And 80% of the time we don’t even realize when God’s hand is directing us overtly because we’re too focused on ourselves to see it. And when the results aren’t to our liking, we sulk and pout and snarl at God for not giving us what we want. And miss what He’s doing to us and through us and for us. This is real life. How many miracles I’ve missed over the reason would probably floor me. But you rejoice when the Lord reveals them to you and humbly say Thank you and vow not to be so mulish in the future. Which lasts all of a day.
Also, there’s a smattering of poetry in here, of an archaic and delightful flavor that brings a smile to my face. And the context of it is wonderful too.
There are so many things about this book that I love. I can’t go into further detail because then I’d be rehashing the book and you’d enjoy it more when Enger tells it. So just read it.
A friend and classmate of mine named Jim Wentworth once consoled me in a bar not to be too impatient about my writing. He told me you have to live and build up experiences before you can write about them, which made an awful lot of sense to me. In a way, a writer is always doing research since he writes from his own experience. My problem is my reticence to experience much. But I’m learning patience, a lesson which by its very nature takes a while and like most skills is basically acquired by practicing it. You learn to be patient by being patient, and it’s always tough at first when learning anything. I’m also learning boldness, though that lesson isn’t going as well as I’d like. All this to say that I feel like the narrator quite a lot at times, even though he writes about his experiences as an eleven-year-old. What does that say about me, eh?
I really cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you like to read, if you like Jesus, if you like to experience a good story, if you’re just looking for something to kill time, you can’t go wrong with this book. I have to thank Mr. Enger for writing such a wonderful novel. I have to thank my big sister Abigail for insisting that I read it. And I have to thank the Lord for inspiring such a wonderful book. And for everything else. Like the concept of reading and literature in the first place.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Take a Walk on the Golf Course with God
Here are a few reasons why I love golf. First, it’s outside and I enjoy being outside in natural settings. Even if you’re in the middle of town, even though the land has been scaped (why isn’t that a legit usage of the term?) you’re still walking on grass mostly, hitting around trees and over ponds, stomping and slashing in sand, searching and cursing in bushes and weeds. Much better than being inside, by and large, wouldn’t you agree? Second, I’m rather vain as a person, and golf enables me to feed my vanity even while “humbling” me. Don’t get me wrong, it does humble me a little; the same way I am currently feeling humbled by losing my 70th consecutive game of Settlers of Catan. But it’s the kind of humility that only makes me more driven to assert my authority and superiority. So in that sense it’s a demonic humility since its only purpose is to facilitate pride.
But the best reason why I love golf is the abundant and wonderful analogies to Life it lends itself to, particularly the Christian life. Though it really can apply quite well to a secular life also; I just tend to approach things like worldviews from a Christian perspective, or at least, as Christian a perspective as I am presently capable of applying. Which isn’t any great shakes, I might add; at least, not in respect to a true Christian perspective. Doubtless it would seem very Christian to a non-Christian not familiar with true Christianity. But for anyone who examines the life of Jesus on earth, or really any of the New Testament, or who has read Mere Christianity, my shortcomings in maintaining and even creating a Christ-like perspective will be glaringly apparent.
That, however, is beside the point I’m laboriously trying to make. I am reading Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan and Herbert Warren, illustrations by Anthony Ravielli. (Which is an ironic title since it was written in 1957; Hogan refers to old timers like Harry Vardon and Walter Hagen, whereas now we refer to old timers like, well, Ben Hogan.) Regardless, I finished the first chapter, the first fundamental, which is, in fact, rather fundamental: the Grip. Here’s how he ends the chapter:
As he improves, the average golfer will enjoy the game more and more, for a correct swing will enable him to rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time. He will have the necessary equipment, the full “vocabulary” for golf. He’s going to see a different game entirely…When he hits a poor shot and leaves himself with a difficult recovery, he’ll respond to the challenge of having to play a difficult shot extra well in order to make up for his error…He will feel this way about golf because he will know he has an essentially correct, repeating swing and that he can, with moderate concentration, produce the shot that is called for. He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him. (35-36).
What struck me about this was the spiritual application that immediately leaped out of the page. As anyone who has come within shouting distance of me knows, I am going through a rather rough patch at the moment, with no full-time job, not enough money to pay the rent and bills, no prospect of what I’m going to do once my lease here is up, etc. And the Lord has been working me over pretty good with all this, speaking to me through the various books I’ve been reading (48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning), the sermons at my church, the small group I’ve been attending, the experiences I’ve had like constant, repeated rejection, and my own inner turmoil. He has been trying to correct my spiritual grip, the fundamentals of my walk with Him, how I approach Him and how I approach my life. And this concept that Hogan explains in relation to golf, how having the basic Grip down and CORRECT is going to be vital in how the rest of the golf game, and the rest of the lessons, function. Once you have the essentials of any skill or method down, you can build on it, you can create variations on the original theme. But even more essential, you will have the confidence in yourself because you have the fundamentals down and you know that you can reproduce the same results consistently. Any golfer can hit a great shot by accident; what separates the pros from the joes is that the pros can reproduce the same swing, the same shot whenever they want. Because they know what the fundamentals of the shot are and have practiced them to the point where it’s second nature. Hogan has been hammering this point repeatedly in the introduction and first chapter.
So what the Lord has been doing to me is to correct some of the mistakes in my spiritual grip, to demonstrate what I’m doing wrong and how to solve it. Take, for example, money. If He had blessed me with a great fortune a year ago, it is very probable that the wealth would have gone to my head. I would have come to depend upon myself, to regard God as caretaker of my spirit and soul, while I handle the corporeal life until it ends. “No, Lord, you work on my struggles with Lust and Arrogance, I’ll just handle the finances. Money is so tawdry and materialistic; I don’t want someone as holy as You to concern yourself with such matters. It’s beneath You.” (Imagine this with a semi-haughty tone, worldly and hoity-toity. Shouldn’t be too hard; we all have that voice in our repertoire.) Well, after this little crisis, I’m not going to be so cavalier about money. When you’re on the brink of financial ruin for an extended period of time, some misapprehensions and misconceptions get shelved pretty quickly. Things like, “Oh, if I just have a college degree, I can always find a job,” or “God won’t ever let me get into too bad a financial straight, not if I’m honestly seeking Him.” Guess what, boobala? That’s exactly why He’s letting me go through this, because I’m seeking him. If I was content to remain a spiritual infant, and assuming God didn’t mind me staying that way, He might wipe His hands and let me sit in spiritual atrophy. Of course, He loves me too much to let me dwindle into spiritual torpor, like any parent who takes away a security blanket so their child learns to do without it. They may scream and bawl for a while, but eventually they’ll learn to make do, and find they didn’t really need that security blanket to begin with.
And don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying I’m totally cured of greed and can now become a billionaire without any problems. Au contraire, mon fraire! Like any vice and virtue in this earthly journey, I’ll never fully arrive at perfection until God strips off the last vestiges of the flesh and I am given a new body. However, I have a new appreciation for money and for my own ability to generate it. All money comes at the pleasure of God; that job you have that you think is due to your modest talents and skills, you could lose tomorrow. That fat bank account you rely on for retirement or a nice vacation this summer could be wiped out in a second. Or in a year, like mine, not through reckless spending but simply because you’re paying bills and not making money. Which leads us to jobs and the like, which is again out of your control. What is in your control, the only thing in your control, is your relationship with the Lord. God’s attitude toward you (and by “attitude” I mean stance; think of how a golfer addresses the ball) is unchanging. What changes is our attitude toward Him; and by attitude I mean stance, but our stance can be affected by our circumstances, which affect our feelings or “attitude” in the more traditional sense of the word. And this is the fundamental, the Grip. Because once we get into the proper attitude towards God and regarding ourselves, everything else follows from it. Like the Grip in golf, a proper starting point will allow us to build upon the foundation, will enable us to create new opportunities and ways of interacting with the Lord and with others. And this will actually lead to better results in us, in our relationships with others, and in our walk with God. (Not incidentally, improved relationships with others can lead to improvements in feelings, finances…you know, all those things we think of as being the “fundamentals” of life.) Like the Grip fixing that tendency to slice our tee shots without directly addressing it, the right relationship with God can fix our marriages, create opportunities to witness to unbelievers, enhance our professional status, and increase our overall enjoyment of life. But getting the Grip right comes first.
In the quote Hogan claims that the golfer will “rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time.” This means that what the person has been doing, that is supposedly Golf in their mind, has in fact been something not quite Golf. Just like you can be singing a song that you think you know, but if you don’t know the right words, you’re not really singing that particular song. There is an objective reality to things even if we don’t know what it is, or even can’t know it for whatever reason. But the point here is that Golf as it is and not as you think it is will follow from a proper grasp of the fundamentals. And this means that you’re not playing Golf until you do. In the same way, Life, the Christian life, is an objective reality. And I (for I shall use myself as the example; feel free to draw analogies to your own lot as you see fit) have not been living Life with God. Oh, I’ve been a Christian for quite some time now, just as I have been playing “golf” since the age of 20. But like the erroneous perception of the Grip, I haven’t really been living the Christian life, as God defines it. This is evidenced in the simple fact that I still fail, and that I’m undergoing a process of refining, of purification, breaking down the tough lump of clay to the point where it can be shaped into the Master’s vision. A proper clay jar doesn’t need to be broken into pieces to be made into a proper clay jar; it’s already a clay jar! This may seem like an foolish tautology, but I’m sure it’s sound. A properly working machine doesn’t need to be taken apart to be fixed because it’s working properly. It may seem too simple. But the machine that is Me, my spiritual life, is not fixed. It’s sputtering along, wheezing and meandering all over the place. The Lord has to pull me over to the side of the road and start taking out parts, replacing the incorrect or broken ones, and cleaning the clogged hoses. This means some deconstruction, some major overhauls, and that takes time and inconvenience. But the result is that the machine of my spiritual life will eventually run like a top. Or so I assume.
Hogan mentions earlier in the chapter that a grip too tight will cause all sorts of problems, and is as detrimental to a grip too loose. If you strangle the club, it will strangle your game. If you keep a firm yet easy grasp, your game improves. As with life. If I try too hard to obey God, to take the initiative, I can foil His attempts to teach me things. I’m certainly not walking in dependence upon Him, which is the essence of the Christian walk Jesus modeled on earth. Conversely, a too laissez-faire approach to life, to let God do all the work, is no more effective and fulfilling than a stranglehold. Different problems arise, but they well equally foil your communion with the Lord. That balance one must strike is key, and devilishly difficult to find, even harder to maintain. But the more you seek it, the oftener you find it, and the easier it is to regain and retain that balance. Likewise, as your familiarity with the proper grip increases, you can quickly, effortlessly, and instinctually duplicate it for every shot.
“He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him.” Like all initiates, the fresh-faced greenhorn quickly learns what he doesn’t know, how he doesn’t meet the bill, where he doesn’t make the grade. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than in Christian life. For nowhere are the stakes higher and the transformation more radical. A golfer may have the most horrendous grip imaginable, one that makes an instructor pale in horror at the sheer ignorance and fallibility of such a grip. “You swing that club like a baseball bat,” he may wail, “and you hold it like a rake!” But no matter how erroneous a grip the beginner has on the club, it is still not more than a nanometer away from the correct grip compared to the light years separating an earthly walk from a truly Christ-like one. Easier to teach a fish to climb trees than to teach a dead man how to be alive. So we start at a disadvantage, though the word isn’t even a beginning on explaining the true state of affairs. Yet, the novice golfer will begin to make strides; as he plays more and more, reads literature about proper stance and grip, takes lessons from pros and partners and the guy they paired him with, as experience teaches him how to play bunker shots and knock-downs, he begins to resemble that which he is, a golfer. Even great players like Hogan or Nicklaus or Tiger Woods didn’t swing a perfect stroke the first time they gripped a club, and they all practiced like fiends to hone their craft, to add more shots and more confidence in their game, to gain another five yards of distance or another five percent backspin, knowing that the difference between victory and defeat may be their ability to put a drive twenty feet beyond their competitor and spin their ball four inches closer to the hole. But they are golfers whether they win or lose, shoot a 62 or an 84, play for a green jacket or a cool one at the clubhouse. They are golfers because of who they are and what they do, not because of how well they play. I am a golfer because I love to play and I play whenever I can.
Likewise, I am not a Christian because I walk a perfect line with Christ, utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit, completely unified with the Father, never lusting, envying, fearing, doubting, snarling, gossiping, failing. I may never conquer all my sins in this life, in fact, that’s a safe bet. But I am a Christian because of who I am, because of what I choose to be, how I choose to live and move and have my being, and what therefore the Lord has done to me, through me, and for me. “Christian” doesn’t mean “perfect”; it means “desiring to walk with God, relying on Jesus to save me from the brink, trusting in the Holy Spirit to remake me despite myself.”
And as I grow in my knowledge and understanding of golf, of how to hit shots, what irons do what, how to chip and putt, my love and respect for the game grows and feeds my desire to return to it again, to discover new challenges and experience new joys. And as I progress in surrendering to Christ, in yielding to the refining process of the Father, to the metamorphosis of the Spirit, and as that translates into actions and behavior and emotion in my life, my understanding of who God is ever deepens and draws me back to Him more and more. The addiction spirals down the more you feed it, but not all addictions are bad. (And no, I’m not saying my addiction to golf is good.) So how addicted to Jesus are you?
But the best reason why I love golf is the abundant and wonderful analogies to Life it lends itself to, particularly the Christian life. Though it really can apply quite well to a secular life also; I just tend to approach things like worldviews from a Christian perspective, or at least, as Christian a perspective as I am presently capable of applying. Which isn’t any great shakes, I might add; at least, not in respect to a true Christian perspective. Doubtless it would seem very Christian to a non-Christian not familiar with true Christianity. But for anyone who examines the life of Jesus on earth, or really any of the New Testament, or who has read Mere Christianity, my shortcomings in maintaining and even creating a Christ-like perspective will be glaringly apparent.
That, however, is beside the point I’m laboriously trying to make. I am reading Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan and Herbert Warren, illustrations by Anthony Ravielli. (Which is an ironic title since it was written in 1957; Hogan refers to old timers like Harry Vardon and Walter Hagen, whereas now we refer to old timers like, well, Ben Hogan.) Regardless, I finished the first chapter, the first fundamental, which is, in fact, rather fundamental: the Grip. Here’s how he ends the chapter:
As he improves, the average golfer will enjoy the game more and more, for a correct swing will enable him to rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time. He will have the necessary equipment, the full “vocabulary” for golf. He’s going to see a different game entirely…When he hits a poor shot and leaves himself with a difficult recovery, he’ll respond to the challenge of having to play a difficult shot extra well in order to make up for his error…He will feel this way about golf because he will know he has an essentially correct, repeating swing and that he can, with moderate concentration, produce the shot that is called for. He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him. (35-36).
What struck me about this was the spiritual application that immediately leaped out of the page. As anyone who has come within shouting distance of me knows, I am going through a rather rough patch at the moment, with no full-time job, not enough money to pay the rent and bills, no prospect of what I’m going to do once my lease here is up, etc. And the Lord has been working me over pretty good with all this, speaking to me through the various books I’ve been reading (48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning), the sermons at my church, the small group I’ve been attending, the experiences I’ve had like constant, repeated rejection, and my own inner turmoil. He has been trying to correct my spiritual grip, the fundamentals of my walk with Him, how I approach Him and how I approach my life. And this concept that Hogan explains in relation to golf, how having the basic Grip down and CORRECT is going to be vital in how the rest of the golf game, and the rest of the lessons, function. Once you have the essentials of any skill or method down, you can build on it, you can create variations on the original theme. But even more essential, you will have the confidence in yourself because you have the fundamentals down and you know that you can reproduce the same results consistently. Any golfer can hit a great shot by accident; what separates the pros from the joes is that the pros can reproduce the same swing, the same shot whenever they want. Because they know what the fundamentals of the shot are and have practiced them to the point where it’s second nature. Hogan has been hammering this point repeatedly in the introduction and first chapter.
So what the Lord has been doing to me is to correct some of the mistakes in my spiritual grip, to demonstrate what I’m doing wrong and how to solve it. Take, for example, money. If He had blessed me with a great fortune a year ago, it is very probable that the wealth would have gone to my head. I would have come to depend upon myself, to regard God as caretaker of my spirit and soul, while I handle the corporeal life until it ends. “No, Lord, you work on my struggles with Lust and Arrogance, I’ll just handle the finances. Money is so tawdry and materialistic; I don’t want someone as holy as You to concern yourself with such matters. It’s beneath You.” (Imagine this with a semi-haughty tone, worldly and hoity-toity. Shouldn’t be too hard; we all have that voice in our repertoire.) Well, after this little crisis, I’m not going to be so cavalier about money. When you’re on the brink of financial ruin for an extended period of time, some misapprehensions and misconceptions get shelved pretty quickly. Things like, “Oh, if I just have a college degree, I can always find a job,” or “God won’t ever let me get into too bad a financial straight, not if I’m honestly seeking Him.” Guess what, boobala? That’s exactly why He’s letting me go through this, because I’m seeking him. If I was content to remain a spiritual infant, and assuming God didn’t mind me staying that way, He might wipe His hands and let me sit in spiritual atrophy. Of course, He loves me too much to let me dwindle into spiritual torpor, like any parent who takes away a security blanket so their child learns to do without it. They may scream and bawl for a while, but eventually they’ll learn to make do, and find they didn’t really need that security blanket to begin with.
And don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying I’m totally cured of greed and can now become a billionaire without any problems. Au contraire, mon fraire! Like any vice and virtue in this earthly journey, I’ll never fully arrive at perfection until God strips off the last vestiges of the flesh and I am given a new body. However, I have a new appreciation for money and for my own ability to generate it. All money comes at the pleasure of God; that job you have that you think is due to your modest talents and skills, you could lose tomorrow. That fat bank account you rely on for retirement or a nice vacation this summer could be wiped out in a second. Or in a year, like mine, not through reckless spending but simply because you’re paying bills and not making money. Which leads us to jobs and the like, which is again out of your control. What is in your control, the only thing in your control, is your relationship with the Lord. God’s attitude toward you (and by “attitude” I mean stance; think of how a golfer addresses the ball) is unchanging. What changes is our attitude toward Him; and by attitude I mean stance, but our stance can be affected by our circumstances, which affect our feelings or “attitude” in the more traditional sense of the word. And this is the fundamental, the Grip. Because once we get into the proper attitude towards God and regarding ourselves, everything else follows from it. Like the Grip in golf, a proper starting point will allow us to build upon the foundation, will enable us to create new opportunities and ways of interacting with the Lord and with others. And this will actually lead to better results in us, in our relationships with others, and in our walk with God. (Not incidentally, improved relationships with others can lead to improvements in feelings, finances…you know, all those things we think of as being the “fundamentals” of life.) Like the Grip fixing that tendency to slice our tee shots without directly addressing it, the right relationship with God can fix our marriages, create opportunities to witness to unbelievers, enhance our professional status, and increase our overall enjoyment of life. But getting the Grip right comes first.
In the quote Hogan claims that the golfer will “rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time.” This means that what the person has been doing, that is supposedly Golf in their mind, has in fact been something not quite Golf. Just like you can be singing a song that you think you know, but if you don’t know the right words, you’re not really singing that particular song. There is an objective reality to things even if we don’t know what it is, or even can’t know it for whatever reason. But the point here is that Golf as it is and not as you think it is will follow from a proper grasp of the fundamentals. And this means that you’re not playing Golf until you do. In the same way, Life, the Christian life, is an objective reality. And I (for I shall use myself as the example; feel free to draw analogies to your own lot as you see fit) have not been living Life with God. Oh, I’ve been a Christian for quite some time now, just as I have been playing “golf” since the age of 20. But like the erroneous perception of the Grip, I haven’t really been living the Christian life, as God defines it. This is evidenced in the simple fact that I still fail, and that I’m undergoing a process of refining, of purification, breaking down the tough lump of clay to the point where it can be shaped into the Master’s vision. A proper clay jar doesn’t need to be broken into pieces to be made into a proper clay jar; it’s already a clay jar! This may seem like an foolish tautology, but I’m sure it’s sound. A properly working machine doesn’t need to be taken apart to be fixed because it’s working properly. It may seem too simple. But the machine that is Me, my spiritual life, is not fixed. It’s sputtering along, wheezing and meandering all over the place. The Lord has to pull me over to the side of the road and start taking out parts, replacing the incorrect or broken ones, and cleaning the clogged hoses. This means some deconstruction, some major overhauls, and that takes time and inconvenience. But the result is that the machine of my spiritual life will eventually run like a top. Or so I assume.
Hogan mentions earlier in the chapter that a grip too tight will cause all sorts of problems, and is as detrimental to a grip too loose. If you strangle the club, it will strangle your game. If you keep a firm yet easy grasp, your game improves. As with life. If I try too hard to obey God, to take the initiative, I can foil His attempts to teach me things. I’m certainly not walking in dependence upon Him, which is the essence of the Christian walk Jesus modeled on earth. Conversely, a too laissez-faire approach to life, to let God do all the work, is no more effective and fulfilling than a stranglehold. Different problems arise, but they well equally foil your communion with the Lord. That balance one must strike is key, and devilishly difficult to find, even harder to maintain. But the more you seek it, the oftener you find it, and the easier it is to regain and retain that balance. Likewise, as your familiarity with the proper grip increases, you can quickly, effortlessly, and instinctually duplicate it for every shot.
“He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him.” Like all initiates, the fresh-faced greenhorn quickly learns what he doesn’t know, how he doesn’t meet the bill, where he doesn’t make the grade. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than in Christian life. For nowhere are the stakes higher and the transformation more radical. A golfer may have the most horrendous grip imaginable, one that makes an instructor pale in horror at the sheer ignorance and fallibility of such a grip. “You swing that club like a baseball bat,” he may wail, “and you hold it like a rake!” But no matter how erroneous a grip the beginner has on the club, it is still not more than a nanometer away from the correct grip compared to the light years separating an earthly walk from a truly Christ-like one. Easier to teach a fish to climb trees than to teach a dead man how to be alive. So we start at a disadvantage, though the word isn’t even a beginning on explaining the true state of affairs. Yet, the novice golfer will begin to make strides; as he plays more and more, reads literature about proper stance and grip, takes lessons from pros and partners and the guy they paired him with, as experience teaches him how to play bunker shots and knock-downs, he begins to resemble that which he is, a golfer. Even great players like Hogan or Nicklaus or Tiger Woods didn’t swing a perfect stroke the first time they gripped a club, and they all practiced like fiends to hone their craft, to add more shots and more confidence in their game, to gain another five yards of distance or another five percent backspin, knowing that the difference between victory and defeat may be their ability to put a drive twenty feet beyond their competitor and spin their ball four inches closer to the hole. But they are golfers whether they win or lose, shoot a 62 or an 84, play for a green jacket or a cool one at the clubhouse. They are golfers because of who they are and what they do, not because of how well they play. I am a golfer because I love to play and I play whenever I can.
Likewise, I am not a Christian because I walk a perfect line with Christ, utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit, completely unified with the Father, never lusting, envying, fearing, doubting, snarling, gossiping, failing. I may never conquer all my sins in this life, in fact, that’s a safe bet. But I am a Christian because of who I am, because of what I choose to be, how I choose to live and move and have my being, and what therefore the Lord has done to me, through me, and for me. “Christian” doesn’t mean “perfect”; it means “desiring to walk with God, relying on Jesus to save me from the brink, trusting in the Holy Spirit to remake me despite myself.”
And as I grow in my knowledge and understanding of golf, of how to hit shots, what irons do what, how to chip and putt, my love and respect for the game grows and feeds my desire to return to it again, to discover new challenges and experience new joys. And as I progress in surrendering to Christ, in yielding to the refining process of the Father, to the metamorphosis of the Spirit, and as that translates into actions and behavior and emotion in my life, my understanding of who God is ever deepens and draws me back to Him more and more. The addiction spirals down the more you feed it, but not all addictions are bad. (And no, I’m not saying my addiction to golf is good.) So how addicted to Jesus are you?
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Getting to Know You
Matthew 1: 24-25.
"Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus."
Elsewhere in the Bible, like in Luke 1: 34, the expression of "knowing" a man or woman is frequently used to connotate sexual intercourse. I was thinking about this in conjunction with C. S. Lewis' last published work before he died entitled, "We Have No Right To Happiness."
What a curious way to express the concept. To "know" someone. That the physical act of love (another interesting euphemism, that) would be equated with knowledge. And not just intellectual comprehension; a deep, intimate fathoming of another person, of being totally exposed before them, of giving yourself entirely to them and having them reciprocate. The way you know what the weather in New England is like in October because you've lived there for twenty years, or the way you know the wind on Amen Corner at the Masters swirls because you've won 2 green jackets, or the way you know the right moment to unfurl the sails in a gale because you've been seafaring since you were 10. Knowing as experiencing.
You might draw an analogy to languages. You can understand vocabulary and practice pronunciation, but you don't know the language until you're completely reliant upon it, you can only communicate through it, which only happens when you go someplace where they only speak it. How many people in modern times only speak their mates? How many people take the time to try to learn someone else to such an extent?
Not that sex is always going to be the culmination of an exhaustive study of another person; the verses I mentioned involved Joseph and Mary, who were mere teenagers when they were betrothed, probably by their parents. I doubt they had been developing a relationship for several years before this. So I'm not making the point that you have to fully understand your spouse before your consummation celebration. My sister's getting married in June, and she's only known the guy for a year or less. Same with another good friend on mine, who met an African once or twice in the summer before he moved into town, and married him by December.
No, my point is more directed toward the idea of sex itself, and how it has been treated with such disdain and vulgarity over the centuries. We would like to think that no period or people have ever been as depraved as the modern world is, but the truth is that we may just have more ability to share our depravity around than previous times. Sodom and Gomorrah was probably as bad as San Francisco, if not worse, and the ancient Greeks for all their enlightenment practiced pedophilia openly. There are, I am sure, many more examples through the annals of history. Sex is a favorite tool of Satan's to demean, distort, and destroy mankind.
There is a concept that I've noticed expressed in several ways that the capacity for evil is directly proportionate to the capacity for good. That is, the greater the man's abilities, the worse he has the potential to be. A man with little education is not nearly as dangerous and despicable as one who is well educated and still persists in wrongdoing. The blunt and obvious attack can be easily repelled; the subtle and intelligent strike may not be detected even after ruining its target. Iago from Shakespeare's Othello is a prime example of this. He never challenges Othello directly, never overtly attacks Desdemona's fidelity, but rather with cunning and reverse psychology coerces Othello to strangle his dearest love and to kill himself afterward. Isn't it the same with us? If a demon appeared before us holding a pornographic magazine or a needle of heroin and told us to indulge ourselves, we'd shudder and run from it immediately. But if a friend recommends a "good" movie that just happens to have some nudity in it, or offers a beer at a party, aren't we much more liable to stumble? It's not the same level, to be sure, but it's the first subtle push down the slippery slope that can lead to such destruction. A frontal assault we can see coming and repulse, recognizing it for what it is, but an ambush can destroy us as completely, and do so with greater suffering.
Sex is a good thing. I'm sure of it. But like everything else (and I mean, everything) the devil can twist it to his purposes, which aren't favorable for us. And the world now considers sex as little different from blowing your nose or eating a peach, a thing of no great consequence, noteworthy only in the unusual pleasure it gives and, like any other drug or pleasurable activity, to be sought after only for that pleasure. As Lewis discusses, the forgiveness and tolerance we give to behavior aimed at achieving sex would never be tolerated in any other circumstance.
It's a tired routine to trot out, but recall to your mind the Clinton scandal. The main problem that critics had with the affair wasn't that he committed adultery (that is, political critics; obviously moral and religious pundits decried such behavior), but rather that he lied about it. He committed perjury under oath, and to the American people. And what was the defenders' response? "It's only sex! Why are you prudes getting so riled up? Loosen up a little, man!" For Pete's sake, Clinton's alley cat behavior became a virtue of his by the time he left office! He was congratulated and praised for his exuberance! But if he had lied about a matter of foreign policy, national security, economic plans, or campaign indiscretions? Well, that we won't tolerate! I don't mean to start a political diatribe, but the point is that his pundits dismissed the crime by relegating it to being "only about sex", and that's no big deal. Such is the stature of sex in modern society.
That concept of knowing really appeals to me. I'm glad that I haven't had a serious temptation in that area, a girl who offered herself to me or a situation that easily could have gone there. I'd like to think I would have resisted without pause, but you can never be entirely certain how you will react. And the idea of sex being the culmination of meeting, learning, admiring, adoring, wooing, courting, learning about and marrying a woman, the capstone to one journey and the first step in another, is something I shall relish, more so than some empty experience that I'll only regret. For sex between husband and wife is not the end, but the beginning, the entryway into family, physical intimacy as well as emotional and spiritual intimacy, a process that ends only in death, whereupon all earthbound marriages will dissolve and the eternal Marriage will be consummated fully. In my earthly flesh it troubles me to think of God in such passionate terms; we're more comfortable imagining Him as our Father, Jesus as our Savior and Friend, the Holy Spirit as Counselor and Convictor. But His love, as much as we can imagine it, most closely resembles that between husband and wife, or at least that's what the Word says. And like the process leading up to earth marriages, our death is the end of separation, the grave opens up the chapel doors, and we walk down the streets paved with gold as aisles to the altar of God. Where we shall know, and be truly known.
"Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus."
Elsewhere in the Bible, like in Luke 1: 34, the expression of "knowing" a man or woman is frequently used to connotate sexual intercourse. I was thinking about this in conjunction with C. S. Lewis' last published work before he died entitled, "We Have No Right To Happiness."
What a curious way to express the concept. To "know" someone. That the physical act of love (another interesting euphemism, that) would be equated with knowledge. And not just intellectual comprehension; a deep, intimate fathoming of another person, of being totally exposed before them, of giving yourself entirely to them and having them reciprocate. The way you know what the weather in New England is like in October because you've lived there for twenty years, or the way you know the wind on Amen Corner at the Masters swirls because you've won 2 green jackets, or the way you know the right moment to unfurl the sails in a gale because you've been seafaring since you were 10. Knowing as experiencing.
You might draw an analogy to languages. You can understand vocabulary and practice pronunciation, but you don't know the language until you're completely reliant upon it, you can only communicate through it, which only happens when you go someplace where they only speak it. How many people in modern times only speak their mates? How many people take the time to try to learn someone else to such an extent?
Not that sex is always going to be the culmination of an exhaustive study of another person; the verses I mentioned involved Joseph and Mary, who were mere teenagers when they were betrothed, probably by their parents. I doubt they had been developing a relationship for several years before this. So I'm not making the point that you have to fully understand your spouse before your consummation celebration. My sister's getting married in June, and she's only known the guy for a year or less. Same with another good friend on mine, who met an African once or twice in the summer before he moved into town, and married him by December.
No, my point is more directed toward the idea of sex itself, and how it has been treated with such disdain and vulgarity over the centuries. We would like to think that no period or people have ever been as depraved as the modern world is, but the truth is that we may just have more ability to share our depravity around than previous times. Sodom and Gomorrah was probably as bad as San Francisco, if not worse, and the ancient Greeks for all their enlightenment practiced pedophilia openly. There are, I am sure, many more examples through the annals of history. Sex is a favorite tool of Satan's to demean, distort, and destroy mankind.
There is a concept that I've noticed expressed in several ways that the capacity for evil is directly proportionate to the capacity for good. That is, the greater the man's abilities, the worse he has the potential to be. A man with little education is not nearly as dangerous and despicable as one who is well educated and still persists in wrongdoing. The blunt and obvious attack can be easily repelled; the subtle and intelligent strike may not be detected even after ruining its target. Iago from Shakespeare's Othello is a prime example of this. He never challenges Othello directly, never overtly attacks Desdemona's fidelity, but rather with cunning and reverse psychology coerces Othello to strangle his dearest love and to kill himself afterward. Isn't it the same with us? If a demon appeared before us holding a pornographic magazine or a needle of heroin and told us to indulge ourselves, we'd shudder and run from it immediately. But if a friend recommends a "good" movie that just happens to have some nudity in it, or offers a beer at a party, aren't we much more liable to stumble? It's not the same level, to be sure, but it's the first subtle push down the slippery slope that can lead to such destruction. A frontal assault we can see coming and repulse, recognizing it for what it is, but an ambush can destroy us as completely, and do so with greater suffering.
Sex is a good thing. I'm sure of it. But like everything else (and I mean, everything) the devil can twist it to his purposes, which aren't favorable for us. And the world now considers sex as little different from blowing your nose or eating a peach, a thing of no great consequence, noteworthy only in the unusual pleasure it gives and, like any other drug or pleasurable activity, to be sought after only for that pleasure. As Lewis discusses, the forgiveness and tolerance we give to behavior aimed at achieving sex would never be tolerated in any other circumstance.
It's a tired routine to trot out, but recall to your mind the Clinton scandal. The main problem that critics had with the affair wasn't that he committed adultery (that is, political critics; obviously moral and religious pundits decried such behavior), but rather that he lied about it. He committed perjury under oath, and to the American people. And what was the defenders' response? "It's only sex! Why are you prudes getting so riled up? Loosen up a little, man!" For Pete's sake, Clinton's alley cat behavior became a virtue of his by the time he left office! He was congratulated and praised for his exuberance! But if he had lied about a matter of foreign policy, national security, economic plans, or campaign indiscretions? Well, that we won't tolerate! I don't mean to start a political diatribe, but the point is that his pundits dismissed the crime by relegating it to being "only about sex", and that's no big deal. Such is the stature of sex in modern society.
That concept of knowing really appeals to me. I'm glad that I haven't had a serious temptation in that area, a girl who offered herself to me or a situation that easily could have gone there. I'd like to think I would have resisted without pause, but you can never be entirely certain how you will react. And the idea of sex being the culmination of meeting, learning, admiring, adoring, wooing, courting, learning about and marrying a woman, the capstone to one journey and the first step in another, is something I shall relish, more so than some empty experience that I'll only regret. For sex between husband and wife is not the end, but the beginning, the entryway into family, physical intimacy as well as emotional and spiritual intimacy, a process that ends only in death, whereupon all earthbound marriages will dissolve and the eternal Marriage will be consummated fully. In my earthly flesh it troubles me to think of God in such passionate terms; we're more comfortable imagining Him as our Father, Jesus as our Savior and Friend, the Holy Spirit as Counselor and Convictor. But His love, as much as we can imagine it, most closely resembles that between husband and wife, or at least that's what the Word says. And like the process leading up to earth marriages, our death is the end of separation, the grave opens up the chapel doors, and we walk down the streets paved with gold as aisles to the altar of God. Where we shall know, and be truly known.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)