Egrets!

The parking lot at my job is a fair distance from the building I work at. I usually walk a good distance through terrain occupied by egrets, and there are a lot of them.

Egrets are some of the strangest looking birds, in my opinion ... especially the way they walk. The have long necks that they extend as far as they possibly can. Then the rest of their body catches up with them. If they keep going they extend their necks out first. Sometimes when they put their necks out they seem to decide, "This is as far as I want to go," and they just stop their with their necks long and frozen. Pretty strange.

The egrets fix their eyes on me when I walk by them, and, esthetically speaking, I don't think this is fair. To me, they are the conspicuous ones. On a couple occoasions I have desired to give them an understanding of just how strange they are. On those days I extended my neck out and then came forward with the rest of my body. The egrets watched me the same as always, and continued walking the same as always. And I laughed at them.

"Blessed is the man who does not ... sit in the seat of scoffers."

I was, however, not at peace laughing at them. But why? Weren't these creatures just asking for someone to laugh at them? Then it occurred to me, "Maybe they walk this way because that's how God wants them to walk." This occurred to me not in a bubbly moment of sentiment, but in a quiet moment of seriousness.

If God can observe the fullness of the egrets' absurdity and still care for them, don't their strange movements become something of a boast? Is it possible that with every bending of the neck they are saying, "Here in the world we have nothing to boast, but here in this place of devotion toward God everything is ours!"

So let the egrets have their absurdity, I say. There is something wise and child-like about it. If anyone is fit to be ridiculed, it is the person who is puffed up in all their worldly distinctions and has never learned to know how heaven longs to come close to us independent of the ivory towers we dwell in.

The Angst of Damocles

Cicero records for us an account between Dionysius and a contemporary, Damocles. The narrative is prefaced with the claim: "Dionysius himself pronounced judgment on whether he was happy or not."

The story goes that Damocles was visiting Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracus. Damocles begins talking about all the possessions and advantages of the tyrant's life ... "his wealth and power, the splendours of his despotic regime, the immensity of his resources ..." et cetera. Damocles concludes, "Never ... had there been a happier man."

Seizing the opportunity, Dionysius responds, "Very well, Damocles ... since my life strikes you as so attractive, would you care to have a taste of it yourself and see what my way of living is really like?" Damocles agrees with pleasure.

So Dionysius brings out a golden couch covered in rich embroidery, gold and silver, perfumes, and an elaborate feast. Then Cicero records:

Damocles thought himself a truly fortunate person. But in the midst of all this splendour, directly above the neck of the happy man, Dionysius arranged that a gleaming sword should be suspended from the ceiling, to which it was attached by a horsehair. And so Damocles had no eye for the lovely waiters, or for the artistic plate. Indeed, he did not even feel like reaching out his hand towards the food .... In the end he begged the tyrant to let him go, declaring that his desire to be happy had quite evaporated.

Cicero tells us that, "Dionysius was indicating clearly enough that happiness is out of the question if you are perpetually menaced by some terror."

This reminds me of an assertion made by Anticlimacus, that each person hides a certain inner angst. Certainly death waits for all of us. If we all dred something - if there is some terror we are all running from - then what is happiness and the accumulation of many physical, external things but a distraction from that terror?

Two Views On Sin

Wayne Grudem claimed in his work An Introduction to Systematic Theology that some people define sin as "selfishness". Grudem says this view is common and can be applied somewhat consistently to ethics and Bible interpretation, but it is not his view.

To me it seems like people will gladly take a sacrifice in their own lives ... as long as they are seen for doing it. Kierkegaard once said it is very hard to find a truly selfish person. Most people are so caught up in looking good to other people they will gladly give up a selfish pursuit for the many.

As an example of how these two interpretations work, I was reading in Micah today about how evil men wish to devour widows homes. Is this evil? Yes, definitely! To the person who thinks sin is selfishness this is an example of someone crossing the line as soon as he wanted good things for himself. (C.S. Lewis claimed the way to be righteous was to forget the self altogether.).

Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the Lord and say, "Is not the Lord among us? No disaster will come upon us." Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble. Micah 3:11-12a

Micah says these people do terrible things then go to the temple and say to each other that God dwells among them. A selfish thing to say? No, it's a pious thing to say ... the problem comes when one isn't living in the way one talks. To describe the wicked in the passage as "selfish" is poor word choice. They are hypocrites.

My observation is that people who equate sin with selfishness often say the rules are whatever society says they are. For example, C.S. Lewis says it is fine for women to be totally covered or wear a bikini ... as long as they aren't making people "uncomfortable". It's okay for comedians to tell racial jokes as long as they get laughs. And so on ... What is so tragically overlooked is the view of the person making the decision.

To me it would be wrong to drive under the influence of alcohol. But does society care? I find it more likely that people usually say they oppose drunken driving because they want to deceive others (and their own selves) into thinking that they are really good people. Which sounds to me like people are trying to forget who they really are, which is also Lewis' ultimate solution.

Don't get me wrong, selfishness is bad. We are required to bring good to others as ourselves because God calls us to treat other people the way we want to be treated. The important thing is to love them (because everyone wants to be loved). But as Kierkegaard once said, "Don't forget to love yourself!"

The Burning Bush 2

"But that which makes understanding so difficult is precisely this: that he becomes nothing and yet is not annihilated, that he owes him everything and yet becomes boldly confident; that he understands the truth, but the truth makes him free, that he grasps the guilt of untruth, and then again bold confidence triumphs in truth." -Climaus (Fragments II.B.i)

Moses described the burning of the bush as a marvelous sight. The fire was burning all around the bush and yet it was not consumed by the fire. Surely this is what it is like to be before God - to exist in the procreative love of God. Here a person is surrounded by God's jealousy and righteousness, but instead of annihilation he becomes himself for the first time. This is what Paul calls, "A profound mystery".

In the world people make themselves out to be everything, and yet they are nothing. Their claims possess all the facts and objectivity that science and rationality have to offer, but they are total liars. As Jesus said 'the pagans lord power over one another', but they are all slaves. This too is a great fire, the fury people hide against their neighbor and their own selves. And they are burnt up.

The internal difference - a trifle, the least thing of all to the world - is complete devotion toward God, and devotion to one's neighbor as oneself. This is the only happy devotion.

Nice weather for the ducks!

Last weekend Eric, Sarah, Elizabeth, and I went to Highland park in Kokomo. Originally the two wives probably wanted to go to the beach, but I suggested we go to the city park. And besides, there's always the chance of feeding the ducks.

Eric and Sarah have a couple kids, Jeriah, less than a few months old, and Clayton who I figure is somewhere around two or three.

Sarah grabbed an old loaf of bread before we left. The bread wasn't molding or anything, but you could tell it was getting along. When we arrived Sarah tore a piece of bread in half and tossed it toward the ducks. The ducks went right for it.

Clayton, although very young, was probably old enough to tell we were all watching him and counting on him to be amused by this new experience. He took a whole slice of bread and threw it at a few ducks in the water, who kept swimming but eventually went around to snack on the bread.

Of course the adults were glad to see Clayton (who only knows a couple words) was cooperating with our afternoon plans. We proceeded to praise and applaud the youngster, who smiled.

He went over to the bread again and picked another whole slice of bread. He went over to the ducks again, but this time instead of throwing a piece at them, he stood there looking at the bread.

"Clayton," Eric spoke up loudly. "Throw the bread at the ducks!"
Clayton looked down at the bread and then over at his dad again.
"Clayton!" His dad shouted.

Before we could understand what he had done, Clayton had placed the entire slice of bread in his mouth, which was a couple sizes smaller than the slice of bread. Eric looked puzzled. Clayton was not accustomed to wolfing down his food ... let alone duck food.

Clayton went back over to the bread and picked another slice of bread. He took it near the ducks, who didn't seem any more eager for the bread than earlier, and looked at the bread. Then he put the entire slice in his mouth. Sarah squinted down at Clayton and then turned to Eric. "Why's he doing that?" She asked.

Eric looked sternly upon his son. Eventually he smiled and said, "I guess he was hungry!"

My take on it was this: to a small child with more than enough to eat, food is just food. But when the time comes to start throwing food to ducks, well, this is food! It's not entertainment! This is serious business!

"When Darius was fleeing from Alexander, he managedto get a drink of some muddy water, polluted by corpses. However, he declared he had never drunk anything better - since whenever he drank before, he said, he had never known what it was to be thirsty." -Cicero

Godel's Sickness Unto Death

Kurt Godel (1906-1978) is probably best known for his two incompleteness theorems. They state that for an axiomatic system of numbers (like the natural numbers) there are certain theorems which are true for those numbers which cannot be proven from the numbers themselves.

Godel was one of the brightest thinkers of his time. He won the first Einstein award in 1951 and the National Medal of Science in 1974. In addition to his famous contributions to science, he was also very involved in philosophy (he is credited with an elaboration of Leibniz' proof of God's existence).

Godel also had some curious habits. He was a shy man and eccentric. He kept his windows open through the winter because he was afraid people were trying to poison him. He spent a lot of time with doctors, because he was a sickly man. When they gave him advice, he distrusted them ... sometimes doing the very opposite of the thing they prescribed for fear they were also in league against him. He insisted on only eating his wife's cooking so as to avoid being poisoned. When his wife died, he refused to eat anything and died in 1978.

In Godel the US and the modern world had inherited a mathematician / physicist par excellence and a philosopher and theologian of some note. This man had some amazing "thoughts", so why the mental problems? And if he couldn't "think" himself out of them, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Now, to be honest, I don't know Godel. I've never met the man. I don't know if it would be fair to describe his psychological conditional as "suicidal" exactly. On the other hand, as Camus said, when a man brings himself to death he is making a certain confession. The confession is to a more or less extent that his life no longer means anything to him.

Time and time again I meet people with enormous intellectual gifts who are so reluctant to continue on with their life. And when I mention someone like Godel to one of these people they remark, "What a contemptible mystery how a genius could be so stupid as to want to take their own life ..." As if they were smart about everything but foolish in just this one little regard so as to become suicidal.

Soren Kierkegaard often noted that the greatest thinkers build beautiful systems out of ideas. Often they are in constant haste to express what one of my old college professors described as "the redundant layers of beauty" of their system. But then when you take a good look into their lives, they themselves are not (spiritually speaking) living in beauty of any kind.

The Burning Bush

Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.

So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up."

When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."

Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

He said also, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Exodus 3:1-6