Faith or Otherwise

I recently read a debate between two people from my old college, Biola. Peter Van Elswyk debated Micah Hoover, largely on the topic of how belief relates to reason.

I found some parts of the talk edifying, so I have included them here:

The scary thing to me is the way some people -especially philosophers- make all these distinctions. In the business world this is called "double-booking" as in the Enron case. Where the company (or the individual) has one set of priorities if someone is conducting an audit, and another set of answers in the rubber-meets-the-road economy of life.

The physicians of Christ's time could tell who was sick, but Christ could tell the sick to be healed.

The further the commands of God are separated from a man, the less of a relation his soul has with his body, and the less of a self he is.

The mind, the one with which a person completely loves God, is characterized by the quality with which it entertains possibilities. The righeous man takes bad thoughts captive whereas the unrighteous are snared by their own thinking. God does not evaluate minds by the volume of their knowledge or their raw calculative power. The man who devotes his mind to God is the man who continually searches and examines his priorities.

God does not value the wisdom the world shows off. He has hidden His good things from the wise and revealed himself to infants. He has caught the knowledgable in the snare of their clever ways. He has commanded the wise to make themselves fools. His foolishness is greater than all knowledge and all wisdom.

How sad to consider the speed with which the readers of Descartes fly by him. They wish to hurry on toward building structures, organizations, and The System ... they are exactly and in every way like that foolish man who built his house upon the sand.

The pharisees of the world work restlessly to confine the promises and commands in the Bible to a particular context so as to keep the Bible at arms' length and avoid coming into any real kind of existence.

Paul was not interested in developing an epistemological system -something which could be used, say, by astronomers who are trying to explain photon phenomenon in the viscenity of black holes. Black holes are not only millions of miles away from earth, they are also millions of miles away from having any personal significance to anyone. (If you disagree with that, you should send a wedding card to someone with only a picture of a blackhole on it and see how glad they are to receive it).

The discussion of neutral-sounding topics such as quasars, quibits, and quarks betray the fact that no man is in neutral standing before God. All have gone astray. All are deserving of judgment. All must decide how they shall plead.

The scientific approach of Sir Francis Bacon died a long time ago (if it ever really lived), and in its absence scientists peddle creedal statements disguised (to others and themselves) as objectivity. That is the fractured foundation on which most people try to build their lives.

Having evidence in itself is not bad, and neither is the Law. The question is, "When does having evidence become necessary?" Just as the Law was intended for the unrighteous, so too, evidence is only necessary once someone has ceased to believe.

Out Of Context!

Some days I shudder to think of the way adults rebuke children to explain things children understand better.

In highschool I read a story in the Bible about paying taxes to Ceasar. In the story, Jesus told a man to pay Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar, and to pay God what belongs to God.

I remembered a word my pastor had used in one of his sermons ... context.

I didn't remember how my pastor had used the word or in what way. I just had the word, and I wanted to make sense of it.

When I considered the story some more, I said to myself, "Of course! Jesus was not just giving a command to this man in this context! He intended for us to give to God what belongs to Him today! Context is the barrier that separates us from what Jesus was saying!"

And, of course, I figured my pastor was a master of explaining, not only the Bible, but life itself.

"If something is going to mean anything to me, I have to pull it out of its place and bring it into my own values, my own choices, my own commitments ..." I said to myself.

So the next day I went to my British Literature class.

My english teacher asked us about some of the heavy language that Hamlet used in Shakespeare's play.

"Now class," She asked, "Was Hamlet really contemplating suicide?".

"No!" I burst out.

To this day, I can still remember the smile she had on her face. This was the very answer she wanted someone to say.

"How do you know?" She asked.

"Because we have to take Hamlet's words out of context!"

I clearly remember the look on her face. "We have to take Hamlet's words out of context?"

"Yes! Because as long as we're reading these words about the vanity of life, it's absurdity and unpredictableness, we don't really have any understanding of what Hamlet's saying.

"Shakespeare wants us to takes these very words out of Denmark and plant them in the present. Right here and now. Only then will we understand what he was trying to say."

Well ... this was perhaps an avenue the teacher was not planning on taking that day.

We talked about context after that, for a very long time. We talked about how, not only were we not required to take words out of context, but that this was a serious error that we ought to avoid.

And I thought to myself, 'I thought I was so close to understanding the truth ... but I guess I'm still a young guy full of misunderstandings about life ...'

I have more insight than all my teachers,
For Your testimonies are my meditation.
Psalm 119:99

The Wall

There once was a man named Gary who lived in a certain neighborhood. Gary liked his neighbors very much.

He would have them over to his house to watch football. Their wives would come over and drink tea. Gary always spoke highly of them.

One day he learned that his next door neighbor was moving out of the neighborhood. He went over to meet his new neighbor.

When Gary returned, his wife asked him, "What do you think of our new neighbor?".

"He makes me sick!" Gary said. "I find him revolting! He will bring this whole neighborhood down. He seems to have no special talents or skills. He doesn't strike me as intelligent or scholarly. He just has this simple way about him that makes me want to throw up."

His wife later agreed. Soon the entire neighborhood was talking about what a bad man their neighbor was.

Several days went by, and Gary decided he had to do something. Eventually he decided to build a large wall to divide their yards.

So he started building. It was to be two feet across and four feet high. It took several weekends to build. Every weekend Gary would start out asking himself, "Why am I doing this?" As he worked he thought of many answers to that question.

Occasionally Gary would drive past his neighbor on the street, and his neighbor would wave kindly at him. Gary would pretend like he didn't notice him and would keep driving.

Gary continued to invite his neighbors over to watch football, but he never invited the neighbor who lived across the wall. One time the state college made a spectacular play, and everyone cheered, but Gary just looked over his wall, noticing the smile on his neighbor's face as he went back and forth, mowing the lawn.

In his heart Gary cursed the day his neighbor moved in. He decided to build the fence higher -and thicker.

Several weekends later, the additions to the wall were nearly complete. Gary's neighbor came outside and shouted, "How's the wall coming?".

"Fine." Responded Gary.

"Hey," Said the neighbor. "Why are you putting so much into that thing anyway?"

"I don't know anymore." Answered Gary. After pausing for a moment he called out, "It's because I've never had much inside me, and now I have nothing left."

The neighbor walked out onto the street then came across Gary's yard. "What do you mean?" Asked the neighbor.

"I have been telling lies about myself." Said Gary. "And I have wronged you. I told everyone around here that I didn't like you, so I built this wall to keep you away."

"Really?" Said the neighbor.

"Yeah, but the truth is that when I met you I saw clearly what a rotten person I was, and I built this wall so I would never have to see that again. The real wall was the one I was building in myself."

The neighbor looked stunned for a moment. "I have a backhoe on my property and a big truck. I don't think it would take very long for us to take this wall down."

Gary smiled. "Somehow, I thought you would say something like that ..."

Oh, How He Loves Us So

So we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean we're all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way

That he loves us,
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves ...

This song draws on a number of devotional themes. The complete lyrics can be found here. One part that stands out to me is the description of how God Himself is the inheritance for His people, and we are His portion.

I cannot forsee large crowds of people lining up to buy this song. As for myself, I did try to buy it at my church bookstore today. They didn't have it. The singer, Kim Walker, sings with such a primitiveness, and as the original composer, John Mark McMillan, has noted it's not even a worship song.

The simplicity grabbed me, and I was reminded of the indebitedness I have toward God. I recommend giving the video a listen.

Barth Quotes 1

Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace.

The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather it sets a question-mark against all truths.

God is the unknown God, and, precisely because He is unknown, He bestows life and breath and all things. Therefore the power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded with any high, exalted force, known or knowable.

The activity of the community is related to the Gospel only in so far as it is no more than a crater formed by the explosion of a shell and seeks to be no more than a void in which the Gospel reveals itself.

If men must have their religious needs satisfied, if they must surround themselves with comfortable illusions about their knowledge of God and particularly about their union with Him, -well, the world penetrates far deeper into such matters than does a Christianity which misunderstands itself, and of such a 'gospel' we have good cause to be ashamed.

The Gospel of salvation can only be believed in; it is a matter for faith only. It demands choice. This is its seriousness. To him that is not sufficiently mature to accept a contradiction and to rest in it, it becomes a scandal-to him that is unable to escape the necessity of contradiction, it becomes a matter for faith.

Faith is awe in the precense of the divine incognito.

There is no man who ought not to believe or who cannot believe. Neither the Jew nor the Greek is disenfranchised from the Gospel. By setting a question-mark against the whole course of this world and its inevitability, the Gospel directly concerns every man.

Life moves on its course in its vast uncertainty and we move with it, even though we do not see the great question-mark that is set against us.

It is, in fact, always God against whom we are thrust. Even the unbeliever encounters God, but he does not penetrate through to the truth of God that is hidden from him, and so he is broken to pieces on God, as Pharaoh was.

Our well-regulated, pleasureable life longs for some hours of devotion, some prolongation into infinity. And so, when we set God upon the throne of the world, we mean by God ourselves.

When we rebel, we are in rebellion not against what is foreign to us but against that which is most intimately ours, not against what is removed from us but against that which lies at our hearts.

The insecurity of our whole existence, the vanity and utter questionableness of all that is and of what we are lie as in a text-book open before us.

Fugitive is the soul in this world and soulless is the world, when men do not find themselves within the sphere of the knowledge of the unknown God.

That God is not known as God is due, not merely to some error of thought or to some gap in experience, but to a fundamentally wrong attitude to life.

The enterprise of setting up the 'No-God' is avenged by its success.

When God has been deprived of His glory, men are also deprived of theirs.

Faith is the ineffable reality of God ... clarity of sight is no system, no discovery of research, but the eternal ground of perception.

God alone is the merchant who can pay in the currency of eternity. He alone can make a valuation which is eternally valid.

Disturbance of soul, restless murmuring, cavil, and protest: such may be sign-posts to the peace of God which passeth all understanding.

What is pleasing to God comes into being when all human righteousness is gone, irretrievably gone, when men are uncertain and lost, when they have abandoned all ethical and religious illusions, and when they have renounced every hope in this world and in this heaven.

God knows what we do not know. Hence emerges the incomprehensible possibility that lawless men are brought to judgment, and yet pass through it into freedom.

He sets all men of all ranks always under one threat and under one promise.

In His utter strangeness God wills to make Himself known and can make Himself known.

Apart from this, thy labour is but THY labour: thy righteousness is robbery, for who does not steal? thy purity is adultery, for who is rid of sexuality? thy piety is arrogance, for where is the piety which does not approach God too nearly? Is there any advantage in distinguishing before the judgement seat of God a higher and a lower form of worldliness?

If God be not for thee, all is against thee.

For when God does not find the worth which He values and for which He renders, mere human advantages have no particular significance.

The heroes of God without God may be compared to a traveller who remains standing under the sign-post, instead of moving in the direction to which it directs him. The sign-post has become meaningless; and their faith and prayers and Biblical outlook are meaningless also.

God passes by all that is concrete, visible, and outward, for He judges in secret according to His justice.

Barth, Karl. The Epistle to the Romans.
Taken from chapters 1 and 2.

Liking Or Loving

Smitty asked an important question on her blog:

What is the difference between loving God and liking God?
Is there any difference at all?

This question has been with me long after I have shut off my computer and gone to bed. At times, when my mind has wandered down an avenue of interest I have almost been tempted to look over my shoulder as if to find that it has snuck up on me again.

Something about the question lingers with me, and within me.

At times I have encountered the question at church while singing worship songs. My mouth has no problem getting the words out. It basically runs on auto-pilot.

Sometimes I even think to myself, 'Well, it was very nice of God to do that ...'. And then -somewhere in the back of my mind- it's like this voice is asking me, "Is there a difference between liking God and loving Him?".

The question, I believe, is demanding. And difficult.

Consider the cause of the young woman who has been seeing someone for a year or so. She can tell he likes her lips. Her figure. The way she talks. And she can tell he likes her company. But the essential question is still very open ...

Is he serious ... or ... is he merely toying with appearances?

One can say many things of esthetics. One can talk about the way the hair falls, the timing and pronunciation of certain words, the quiet and brief way she may place her hands on his shoulders.

And one can wonder about esthetics without ever recalling that one, in fact, exists and wonders about esthetics.

But there are very few things to be said about seriousness. One either holds the lightning to reign over the possibilities of their life or one does not.

"These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."

To like is to offer a distant approval. An approval is a gesture which (simultaneously!) conveys acceptance ... agreement ... consent ... yet it holds back.

When Jesus asked Peter if Peter loved Jesus, Peter replied that he liked Jesus. How human! How just like us all!

We all wish to love, for love (and seriousness) is indeed one and only one thing. When anyone loves, they have made a commitment.

But it is much easier to live in the realm of possibility. It is easier for a man to dream of the way he will spend of his money than to actually part with the cash. It is easier to think about helping starving people than to feed the starving. It is easier to envision oneself fighting a nation's enemies abroad than it is to enlist in the military.

In a way, Jesus asks everyone the same question smitty asked. But he looks for the reply not so much in words as he does in the way a person chooses to live.

After Peter professed his regard for his master, Jesus commanded him to feed his sheep. The choice entailed an action. Certainly the action and the choice were not the same thing. Not everyone who feeds the poor has understood love. And some people truly cary a love for Christ, but it is so buried inside them that it never surfaces into their actions.

Yet, in the life of the devoted, the love and the response are intimately united. The love we have for Christ demands that we love our neighbor, that we love the lowest sinners (whether they are others or ourselves). And this is the very thing men dread when choosing between loving and liking.


An Actual Self

The question about the difference between loving and liking is like the question about the difference between actuality and possibility.

A man who likes a woman entertains a possibility, while a man who loves a woman has something very actual. Even if the woman rejects him all her life he has a very real thing: his love for her.

Of course, our choices say a lot about who we are as well.

If a man lives for the 'chance' things in life, the possibilities, making them his only thought rising out of bed and going to sleep, and waiting for them to give him validity in life, then, in a spiritual sense, the man's life is a possibility. And if his life is a possibility he is not yet alive.

If a man lives for something actual, that is to say, if he actually knows what is important to him and actually seeks to pursue it, then, in a spiritual sense, that man's life is an actuality. And if his life is an actuality he is truly alive.

For Your Reflection

I don't recommend searching for "Soren Kierkegaard" on YouTube. There are some strange spanish cartoons, and a puppet show I couldn't understand (the puppet did look somewhat like Kierkegaard). Also there was a video of a girl who named her dog "Kierkegaard".

This clip is an exception. This man has some good life reflections on the berevity of life and the way every person must choice for the limited time in which he remains here.

Also, I don't believe my readers have a lot of familiarity with the Dane, so I thought it might be helpful to provide a distinctive summary on the man's direction. To the extent that I can tell (though I am often fooled) this man seems to have been able to understand what all of this meant for him.

The difference between understanding "a truth" and understanding a truth "for oneself" is itself the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Kierkegaard is not someone who seeks to tell his audience who Jesus is, but instead demands of his audience to decide who Jesus is for their own selves.

May you be lifted into the realms of heavenly seriousness.
The Burning Bush