Conspiring to Accuse Conspiracy

One of my math teachers in highschool was a Boeing engineer before he became a teacher. Occasionally he would mention a story about his job at a space observatory in New Mexico.

The students in my class asked him some terrible and bizarre questions.

One student claimed she had it on good authority that the government built space observatories in the Southwest to hide the fact that they were really growing marijuana.

My teacher's response: "It was a space observatory! Why would the government spend 100 million dollars to build a telescope to grow marijuana?".

Another student said he heard from his parents that the Air Force had a secret base in the Albequerque desert where the mountains would open and the helicopters could fly right in.

One time while on vacation in Hawaii one of the students read in the Honolulu Advertiser that the government had destroyed a battleship with a giant laser.

Perhaps it would not be out of line to ask if these students believed these allegations?

Or - going a bit farther - maybe the students didn't think the government was doing any questionable activity at all.

Maybe the real conspirators were the students themselves who felt a requirement to obey their teacher and the government. Perhaps instead of obeying the teacher and the government they instead wanted to undermine their authority.

Each man knows his own thoughts (as Paul writes) so I cannot conclude with certainty what their thoughts were.

There are a lot of conspiracies, and they are often very bizarre. For example, some people think there is a secret, underground city built underneath the Denver International Airport. [1]

Don't be confused into thinking people tell these stories because they give their own lives meaning. These stories are most often told for entertainment and sometimes as an evasion to living a responsible life.

People also have had conspiracy theories about God.

The Bible records in the book of Ezekiel that the people told one another that God treated them unjustly. Their tale was that God judged them on the basis of other people's decisions.

"But the house of Israel says, `The way of the Lord is not right.' Are My ways not right, O house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are not right?
"Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct," declares the Lord GOD. "Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you.
Ezekiel 18:29-30

Some people today think that God wants to give people the hope of having a normal life ... but only so He can crush those dreams with cold insensitivity.

And so these people associate and tell each other this conspiracy. We see their mockeries on late night television. We hear their sterile voices in the universities. We read their drive-by views in the "associated" newspapers.

But are these the people not the ones who are conspiring together?

The Bible tells us in Revelation that we will not always have the luxury of banding togther in our beliefs and choices. There will come a day when every man shall give an account of his or her own choices.

At that point, it will not matter what the government or the inquisition or the crusades did. Each person will have to answer for their own choices.

So in the spirit of ending conspiracies I have a question. What is keeping you from bringing your views to God? Do you think He can handle hearing it? Do you think He cares about you?

Consider the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 :
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

How I Came To Despise Apologetics

Apologetics can be defined as the practice of using evidence to defend Christianity. A few years ago I was keenly interested in it.

I labored for a long time investigating philosophy, forensics, and science, but at one point my interest died suddenly and completely.

How do I begin?

Over a period of three or four years I had read a number of non-Christian materials and some apologetics material with the express intent of having a ready Christian response. I read the Book of Mormon (cover to cover), Farewell to God by Charles Templeton, The Case for Christ, an intro to Derrida, The God Who Is There by Schaeffer, and lots and lots of Plato. I read a lot more than that, and I'm not even counting the ones I had to do for class!

At some point in my reading I began to do devotions less often. I couldn't fit the words of Christ into any system described by an apologist, and I began to favor the message of the theologians and scholars.

One day I had to go to the hospital in Lafayette for an appendectomy. I was reading Strobel and I came across an interview with a professor who said faith was more important to the Christian life than reason. How I hated those words! In my spirit I demanded he have "justification" for his claims. He quoted Jesus saying:

"Blessed are those who do not see and still believe."

And so I spent hours and hours doing mental gymnastics with myself trying to explain Christ's words.

While I sat in my hospital room they brought in a Mormon who I got to know. He was a youth group leader and his kids were so devoted to him. They brought him all kinds of cards and even made a giant postcard, which they all signed.

I considered myself an expert in witnessing to Mormons. I spent hours discussing the Bible with a certain bishop who (I believe) still lives a few blocks from my house. I also spent a spring break in Utah witnessing to the Mormons at BYU and St. George.

I shared my faith and I was very careful to sound as intelligent as I could about it. The more intelligent I tried to sound the more futile my words sounded to me. Part of the problem was a voice in the back of my mind saying: "You can say anything you want because you are so superior to him!"

This was my flesh speaking to me. The voice my apologetic training had cultivated.

The Mormon man said, 'Look, I was going door-to-door in England and I met a guy who covered his hands over his ears and shouted as loud as he could. Then he slammed his door in my face. I don't want to stop listening to people, but to me faith means trusting God even when things look different.'

At that moment I considered the Mormons to be full of lies. I still do.

But I thought about how he had resolved to trust God even when everything seemed to demand the opposite response.

Logic, reason ... even objectivity itself.

The anesthesiologist came in and said, "Now listen ... strange things happen in the operating room. People get attacked by Zebras in the streets. It's terrible, but it's very rare. Don't worry about it."

As silly as it probably sounds this was one of the first times in my life I had seriously considered dying. I looked at Stobel's book and asked myself if the materials I had read had given me one proof that there was going to be an afterlife if I died during surgery.

I thought and thought.

I considered many persuasive arguments, but nothing convinced me. They started to pull me into the operating room and I thought to myself, "Wait! Stop! This is madness! I could die here! I need to do something!"

As my thinking slowly gave way to sleep I thought about the Mormon believing without seeing and I envied him. In the secrecy of my thoughts, nothing seemed more beautiful to me. In a moment of infinite clarity, I found it was the most wonderful thing I had ever considered (and to think I would have despised it a few hours earlier!).

The surgery was successful and I went back to school three days later, but even as I left the hospital I distracted myself with the expressed intention of forgetting everything that had happened there.

The task at hand was convincing teachers that I understood Boethius and Aquinas. I hid my reflections in a distant, dark corner of my mind. I told myself never to go looking there again.

Now it so happened that one day I decided my work load was so small (15 units) that I could be studying more non-Christian material to bring people to Jesus.

In highschool I was introduced by my philosophy teacher to an obscure Danish writer who a lot of unbelievers were reading. And so I decided to read some of his material for myself.

So one day at the university library I looked up 'Fear and Trembling' in the card catalogue. I spent two months reading the book looking for a way to bring these people to Jesus. After all, he was writing about Abraham. I thought I knew a lot about Abraham.

Instead of finding a way to bring them to Jesus, I instead found that not only (1) did I not understand Kierkegaard's arguments (2) I did not even know what he was trying to say! But my spirit was drawn to his writings.

I forgot about the strange writer for a while.

One day I found myself in the philosophy section of Borders. I saw a book titled, An Introduction to Kierkegaard. I was glad to find a simple explanation of what this man was saying. It was here that I read this sentance:

"All decisiveness inheres in subjectivity.
To pursue objectivity is to be in error."

My first thought was, "No wonder these people need Jesus! They're nuts if they think like this!"

I was enraged as I walked toward the exit. "How could anyone think this way?!".

I stopped in the aisle and thought, "If I'm going to tell these people about Jesus, I need to know what is driving them to accept this absurdity. But when have I ever viewed anything in this way?"

My eyes widened as I recalled a distant memory. When was it?

My devotions.

And so I began to rethink my relationship with reason and evidence.

I considered that there were a number of Bible verses which seemed to categorically oppose apologetics. "If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not know as he ought to know." "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." "Knowledge puffs up but love builds up". Etc.

For my purposes here it is enough to say that they weighed heavily on my thoughts and the more I tried to reason them the more it felt like I was really trying to explain them away.

My roommate in college, Christopher, had a large collection of DVDs. One day I went through them and saw a movie called Meet Joe Black. This seemed like a movie that was trying to say something, so I figured it would be good to have a Christian response to it. The movie blew me away.

Here was the story of a man, Bill Perish, who was trying to live an honorable life. Early in the movie he encounters death, and this encounter changes his entire perspective on everything.

He suddenly learns the importance of being honest about his priorites ... even if they cost him everything. About listening to that inner voice the rest of the world cannot hear. And it is only by finding this inner strength that he is able to oppose death, which he does. He wasn't trying have a valuable life in the eyes of others.

If that description seems a little funny, I understand.

I simply cannot explain it.

After watching the film I was a different person. The person who pushed play to watch the movie was not the same person who pushed stop. When it was over I sat on the couch and I wept.

I wept and I wept and my other roommate, Eric, had no idea what to think about it.

I decided right then, that very night that my relationship with God was going to be under completely different terms. I didn't have a secret stash of marijuana or a party lifestyle, but I was certain of this: my spiritual life was a big lie.

Except I wasn't lying to my parents or my friends. I found that I was lying to myself and to God.

I decided I was going to do it for real - even if no one understood what was going on.

To sum up my change in perspective: there are only two domains, the world everyone can see (the external domain) and the heart that only God can see (the internal domain).

In the world everyone runs after two things: the acceptance of other people (which is external) and distractions (which are also external). What are they distractions from? They are distractions from simply this question: "Is MY life worth living?"

... A question the theologians have hardly any interest in answering ...

In matters of spirit things are different. Here the important person isn't necessarily the one with the most popularity, the most money, the most good appearances. Here the question is not how "good-looking" a thing is, for the spirit knows exactly what it finds good - and if it finds itself to be good. This is the only place a person can find to exist as themselves.

Consider the merchant who found the treasure in a field. He buried it, and he then sold all his possessions to buy that field. To the world around him he must have looked crazy. Why was he spending so much money on this piece of property? Who could understand it?

Perhaps only the merchant could understand before he could show off his physical treasure. As believers we cannot show the riches God has in store for us right now, and so who can understand us here in this life?

So much for explaining subjectivity - to live as a single individual. You either want to live that way or you do not - I can't make that choice for another person.

To me apologetics is a great evil - a betraying of Jesus with a kiss - a supreme slander against God - a total failure of expressing devotion to Him.

Brick Stories

At college I came across a link to a lego Bible story website. You can check it out for yourself at thebricktestament.com. The site creator has put a lot of time into presenting the stories. He claims to spend at least a day doing the set for each one. I find them high quality.

The site has a rating system on each of its Bible stories. N = lego nudity, S = lego sexuality, V = lego violence, C = (mild) cursing.

The author of the site claims to be an atheist. Together with the ratings system one might suspect he is trying to make the Bible look vulgar and lewd. On the other hand he isn't afraid to look at the offensive parts of the Bible, which is so often neglected in these times.

When the extreme message of the Bible is in our view, we are left with one question: "Is this where I find my life?"

The Bible is always asking, always demanding answers from its audience. It asks us, "What about you? Will you return like that single leper and thank God for the things He has given you?" And, "What about you? Will you open the door of your heart and let Christ in?" Etc.

The aspect of its "social acceptability" is not only irrelevant but simply an evasion of our commitment to it. I would suggest to you that the Bible refuses to be evaluated on such terms.

The author of the site claims people are becoming less and less aware of what the Bible really says, and that he is trying to bring it to them.

Whether or not his intentions are undermining the Bible, he certainly is not afraid of looking at the extreme stories in the Bible. My favorite story is the testing of Abraham.

One thing that bothers me about "Bible scholars" is that they seem to take it as their mission to soften the explicit message of the text. When Jesus said it is better to gouge out your eye and go into heaven blind, the Bible scholars are there ready to say, "Jesus doesn't really mean that."

In fact, I don't think I have ever heard that passage quoted without someone immediately stepping in and saying, "Jesus is being figurative," which is to say, "Literally gouging out your eye is not better than going to hell."

And so we keep the Bible scholars close as a way of freeing ourselves from the text and the question it demands of us.

The Brick Testament isn't like that. It adds radicalness liberally to its interpretations. For example the text says, "Give to everyone who asks..." And we see a picture of someone driving off with a Christian's sports car saying, "Christians are soo cool!".

Good luck finding something like that at Bible school.

A certain weakness with the site is that it has recently grown more political. For example in one picture we see the text about how we are to forgive and a picture pops up of George W. Bush giving Osama Bin Laden a pat on the back and forgiving Al Qaida.

I think this softens the radicalness of the message. Instead of forgiving one's neighbor he suggests we should forgive an organization. Or an organization should forgive an organization. Or an organization should be "tolerant" of another organization. And pretty soon nothing is left for the individual to do - the very thing Jesus is the most interested in.

For the most part, this website has a lot to offer.

Check it out if you have the time.

The Boy By The Railing

"...The most important moments are rarely center stage; they most often happen 'in the wings'. Have you found that to be true, too? That what you expected to be the big occasion of the main event turned out to be merely an excuse for you to be somewhere in order to be touched by something you might have otherwise considered of little importance?"
Fred Rogers, Life's Journey's p. 137

My wife teaches at a small junior highschool in Delphi. This is some distance from our house, and she travels it almost everyday. Before summer started I went with her to attend her students' graduation ceremony. I'm glad I made the trip.

Graduation night was extravant. The music was hard to dismiss. The choreography was precise. The food was high-profile. The only aspect I found distasteful was the valedictorian speech, which I found full of words that no human eighth grader should ever speak.

The valedictorian was a short, black young man named Andrew. He was dressed entirely in white (but his basketball shoes were black and white). My wife, Elizabeth informed me that he had put more work into his studies than all the other students combined. The auditorium was full of praise for the young man.

After the ceremony the people began to mix. Graduations - like most of the events at her school - were social affairs. The parents were glad for their children, but for most it seemed to be the exact time for posturing ... insincere compliments ... and lots of networking.

I walked outside the auditorium to get some space. Outside I saw the valedictorian holding a large trophy. I was about to pretend I didn't see him, but he addressed me suddenly saying, "I worked so hard for this night, but you know what? I hardly feel like it means anything!"

The Self-Understanding of Joseph

We are afraid to let people loose; we are afraid that the worst will happen as soon as the single individual feels like behaving as the single individual. Furthermore, existing as the single individual is considered to be the easiest thing in the world, and thus people must be coerced into becoming the universal. I can share neither that fear nor that opinion, and for the same reason. Anyone who has learned that to exist as the single individual is the most terrible of all will not be afraid to say that it is the greatest of all...
Johannes de Silento

Time and time again I find modern writers telling us repeatedly that the path to heaven requires us to forget who we are. They define love as "others-centered" and generally require people to forget who they are.

And then there is that noble Hebrew, Joseph. He was great in a very different way.

Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.

He said to them, "Please listen to this dream which I have had; for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect; and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf."

Then his brothers said to him, "Are you actually going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us?" So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

Now he had still another dream, and related it to his brothers, and said, "Lo, I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me."

He related it to his father and to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, "What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?"

His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.
Genesis 37:6-11

Sometimes at work I think about how Rick Warren would comment on this passage. Clearly, Joseph wasn't forgetting about himself or his dreams - which is the central thing Warren is commanding us to do.

If C.S. Lewis were among Joseph's brothers I can imagine him saying something like, "You ego-maniac! Stop thinking so much about yourself! Think about your family!" To some extent that's what Jacob told Joseph.

But were the dreams not from God?

And consider this, if Joseph had not had those dreams (and had not discussed the dreams with his family) he would have not been sold into slavery and would not have saved his brothers (which the dreams alluded to).

So I say, know your dreams and don't forget who you are, because God sees your faith and wants to give you good things.

Angst And Britney Spears

I'll never forget the time in college I eavesdropped on two students while waiting for my project teammates. My team had arranged to meet each other at two o'clock to discuss the design of our database. I found out later one had to make an emergency doctors appointment and the other simply forgot.

While I was waiting I overheard two senior guys talking at the next table. They were two friends catching up on life. I suppose they were Christians.

One of the two -let's call him Todd- was saying he was doing some acting and that he wouldn't mind being famous someday. The other guy -let's call him Peter- didn't seem very impressed.

'I don't think I'd want to be a celebrity.' He said. 'They often end up regretting their decisions.'

'Like who?' Asked Todd.

'Take Britney Spears as an example,' Said Peter. 'When she started as a singer she publicly claimed that she wanted to be a role model. At a certain point in her career she decided (for whatever reason) she no longer wanted to be a role model.'

Todd rolled his eyes.

'Come on.' Todd said. 'Do you really think she was committed to doing those things she said before she changed her mind?'

Peter sighed (I couldn't see his face) and said, 'Now that is the question.

He continued: 'If I were invited to be on a talk show I think I would say a lot of things like Britney Spears. I would say how sad it is that depravity is tolerated and (in truth) encouraged by Hollywood.

'Now here is the part that scares me. Celebrities are tempted more than normal people are. What if Britney Spears was a young person like us who was just tempted a little more than we are?'

Peter continued: 'What if every person who appears to be righteous is really putting on a show while they are in truth waiting to jump into a world of evil?'

'Doesn't that sound a little like me? Doesn't that sound a little like you?'

Todd's eyes widened. For a brief second, he was frozen.

'I need to go now.' He said. Peter stayed a brief minute before leaving.

I reflected on how easy it is to look down on 'sinners'. Or at least it seems to be fairly common. As for myself, I admit that I do at times feel like that person Peter described.

And it haunts me. Is there any way out?

I believe there is.

It means daily looking into that place no one else can see and asking, "Is this what I want going on in here?".

When a person fails to keep his hidden priorities in check, the world may never learn or suspect his true intentions. But however hidden his unhappy secret is, I wonder if it is a secret from himself? Certainly he cannot hide his true self from God.

In the same way, when a person repents and cleans out all his evil desires, the world may never learn nor suspect his true intentions. But however hidden his (happy) secret is from the world, I wonder if it is a secret from himself?

Certainly God never misses such a secret.

Excerpt From Life's Journeys

After my earlier post about Mr. Rogers, I checked out one of his books. Life's Journeys is very short but I find myself taking a great deal of time to read it. There is a lot of space for reflecting in its pages.

This is an excerpt from Life's Journeys:

When I was a kid, I was shy and overweight. I was a perfect target for ridicule.

One day (how well I remember that day, and it's more than sixty years ago!) we got out of school early, and I started to walk home by myself. It wasn't long before I sensed I was being followed-by a whole group of boys. As I walked faster, I looked around, and they started to call my name and came closer and closer and got louder and louder.

"Freddy, hey fat Freddy. We're going to get you, Freddy."

I resented those kids for not seeing beyond my fatness or my shyness. And I didn't know that it was all right to resent it, to feel bad about it, even to feel very sad about it. I didn't know it was all right to feel any of those things, because the advice I got from the grown-ups was, "Just let on you don't care, then nobody will bother you."

What I actually did was mourn. I cried to myself whenever I was alone. I cried through my fingers as I made up songs on the piano. I sought out stories of other people who were poor in spirit, and I felt for them.

I started to look behind the things that people did and said; and little by little, concluded that Saint-Exupery was absolutely right when he wrote in The Little Prince:
"What is essential is invisible to the eyes." So after a lot of sadness, I began a lifelong search for what is essential, what it is about my neighbor that doesn't meet the eye.

"Let on you don't care, then nobody will bother you." Those who gave me that advice were well-meaning people; but, of course, I did care, and somehow along the way I caught the belief that God cares, too; that the divine presence cares for those of us who are hurting and that presence is everywhere.

I don't know exactly how this came to me, maybe through one of my teachers or the town librarian, maybe through a muscian or a minister-definitely across some holy ground. And, of course, it could have come from the grandfater I was named for: Fred McFeely, who used to say to me after we'd had a visit together, "Freddy, you made this day a special day for me."

My hunch is that the beginning of my belief in the caring nature of God came from all of those people-all of those extra ordinary, ordinary people who believed that I was more than I thought I was-all those saints who helped a fat, shy kid to see more clearly what was really essential.

The Tyrant Within

Cicero sums up the life of Dionysius saying:

He became the tyrant of Syracuse at the age of twenty-five and remained in power for thirty-eight years. It was a superb and immensely wealthy city, and he held it down in slavery. It is true that he lived a temperate enough life, as we are told by reliable writers, and that he was an efficient and hardworking administrator. But his character was evil and malevolent: and for this reason it is impossible for anyone with a clear eye for the truth to avoid regarding him as a supremely unhappy man. For even at a time when he believed that nothing in the world was beyond his powers he failed to get what he wanted.

Cicero has an excellent eye for focusing on the mood of a person over their success and historical circumstances. Small wonder the Stoics were heavily studied by the reformers, particularly Calvin. It is as if they are calling out to us saying, "Yes your exterior life is like such and such ... but how is it going on the inside?"

I previously wrote on Cicero's observation that the tyrant's "stuff" did not make him happy. There is also something to be said for his double-mindedness. Like the earlier case, there is an shocking story to tell.

Here is the story:

As for his official appearances, he did not dare to appear on the public platform, but used to climb up a high tower whenever he wanted to address his subjects. He was very fond of playing ball-games, and the story goes that once, when he was about to take off his tunic for a game, he handed his sword to a youth whom he loved dearly. One of his friends said as a joke, 'Here at least is someone you're prepared to trust your life to!' And the young man smiled.

But Dionysius ordered both of them to be executed, the man who had made the remark because he had pointed out a way in which the king could be assassinated, and the youth because, by smiling, he had implied approval of what the other had said.

This action caused Dionysius greater sorrow than anything else that happened throughout his entire life: because he had ordered the death of a person whom he deeply loved. The story illustrates the contradictory nature of a tyrant's urges. You can only satisfy one at the expense of another.

Cicero draws out the great difficulty in finding a personal identity. If a person -looking to find a personal identity- follows their urges ... they end up being one person at one moment, a different person at another moment, and a different person in a different moment.

The path of our physical desires is not a straight path.

James mentions in his letter that the double-minded man is unstable in all he does. If a person asks for wisdom - and doubts God will grant it - he is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. Similarly it is James who cries out to us, 'Cleanse your hands, you sinners! Purify your hearts, you double-minded!'

Such is the life of a person who is ruled by his desires and fails to rule his desires ... even if he rules a kingdom.