A Sound Mind

The day has come for those with clear and straight-thinking clarity to present to us -to everyone who is ready to listen however great or common- a firm account of the exact difference between a sound mind and insanity.

The history of the word 'sane' is of no help to us. It derives from the Latin word for 'health', sanus. Mental health is too ellusive to derive from eating correctly, exercise, or getting enough sleep -the things we normally associate with health. The word 'sanity' has taken on a transfigured role in language to portray for us something for which we simply have no word. If we intend to understand sanity on the historical basis of its shaping through the years we shall fail.

And what of that German physicist who so generously left the high towers of science (and those who point at the height of those towers as a means of certainty and assurance) to offer us a definition of insanity? Should we say insanity is simply "Doing the same thing and expecting different results"?

Einstein, it will be remembered, was a genius in many affairs but he had his failures also. He failed to recognize the absurdity of quantum physics -what he called 'spooky action at a distance'. And, although the man seemed to be as sane as the next person (though who can say the next person is sane or even if sanity is common?), he failed to understand sanity in the same way.

If one is to know true human greatness -to not only recall it from stories of old but also to find it in one's own life alive and healthy- one must acknowledge the power of those who have failed, and failed, and failed still a hundred times more only to try once again and succeed.

The realm of science is a strapped-down world. We are told that if the conditions are in place and the controls are in order the same thing will always happen in the same way as a result of the same measures. The very thing science rules out as a complete and total rule is the Absurd.

Science can acknowledge that Joshua walked around the city of Jericho six times and nothing happened. It can acknowledge that the city stood or that it fell (for indeed it can be verified that cities have fallen and stood many times throughout history). What science cannot accept is that the seventh time the walls which had stood six times collapsed on the seventh.

And yet Einstein is remembered for his words about sanity. After all, there is something sound about them -something which even the most studied critic can accept about them. Einstein places the focus of his words on the expectation of those who act.

Now, it must be noted, that the common man has some notion of general relativity since people have become more educated (although perhaps they have also become more insane). The common man has also contended with his expectations and putting them into action -something simple and often overlooked by those who write in science journals.

There is something hard to bear about laboring to achieve something one never expects to have. The story of Pandora was told by the Greeks with dreadful tones -not in spite of the hope at the end, but because of it. The ancient Greeks, like Einstein, wanted nothing to do with a hope that outlasted tragedy and misfortune. They considered it more sound to strive thinking their efforts would come to nothing, and for this reason the Greeks loved their tragic heroes who worked hard, who perservered, who gambled their life in a few undertakings, and lost everything.

Perhaps the greatest hero in antiquity, Achilles, is best remembered for sulking among the ships of the Achaians after he gave his captured woman Brisies away to king Agammemnon. The Greeks listened to bards like Homer and thought, 'Yes, that's exactly how it should be! That's how life is!'

This is exactly the perverseness of the world we live in. When a child hopes to receive a bicycle for his birthday and instead receives a sweater he is not only sad but also ashamed for having hoped for the bicycle. We remember the stories of failed marriages because we wish to justify ourselves for not having believed in something as serious and wonderful as marriage. When we are punished for a wrong-doing we expect only hell for the disappointment of losing heaven.

If I could dare to offer a definition in words for the kind of sanity and sound mind which cannot be organized or formulated into words, I would venture to say it is having a clear picture of exactly the things or thing which one values most and believing that they can have it.

For reasons that hardly need to be said, this kind of sanity may be too daring. For every angel that whispers into a young man's ears: 'You can surely find an honest vocation and live an honest life' There is an unclean angel who whispers: 'Do you want to hope for the heights only to be sent to the depths? Take what you can get because only the cheaters and hopeless get anything in this life.'

Healthy thinking is a daunting path. It is far, far easier to believe that salvation is too inaccessible for us and so we must confine our expectations to half-salvations and hopelessness. In the end it has nothing to do with the intelligence of our minds which makes us sane, but our daring to believe and accept good things.

There is also a kind of half-sanity. A voice which says, 'I do not believe a good thing will happen to me, but if -in my doubting- something good does happen to me, it will be just as well as if I had expected it.' If a man listens to this voice too long, it will become his voice.

But however true the voice may sound it is wholly a lie.

This is a voice that points its bitter finger against God and accuses Him of injustice as a way of condescending God into handing something over. But God does not give into the demands of those who take hostages, even if such a man has taken his own mind hostage.

The child who clearly recognizes his dreams and secures a false contendedness -a contendedness which says he shall never meet his dream- is a child who carries with him a heavy burdern. This is why the wise Solomon warned that a hope deferred makes the heart sick.

In the same way a mind that no longer expects to find what it truly desires is an unhealthy mind, and when the health of such a mind becomes completely unhealthy it is insanus, or insane. With the death of the spirit, the mind is also dead even if it goes on thinking.

If a person is to accept this view of sanity, they must also accept that a healthy mind is not too far from them. The alternative is mentally unbearable.

So let us dare to believe that good will be extended to us and not evil. Let us dare to believe that what is ours may be healthy, and that what is sick may be healed. Let us expect to see good things in our own lives and in the lives of our neighbors. And let us rejoice in the good gifts we receive.

Exchange Value

The 19th century saw a new wave of pro-revolutionary, modernistic, athiestic writers. Many advocated the abrupt end of traditional forms of government, marriage, history, and philosophy.

Although these writers moved away from God, many of them had a great deal to say about the human spirit and refered to themselves as spiritual beings. I direct anyone who would say otherwise to examine Nietchze's Geneology of Morals.

Perhaps the most peculiar examples of this tendancy were among the communist writers. One needn't look further than the writings of Karl Marx.

Before Karl Marx started writing manifestos and grand political ideologies he was a romantic poet. One searches in vain to understand how one could derive a multi-national materialist plan out of romantic poetry.

Hard as it may be to believe, these romantic, subjective notions continued into his later writings.

The opening line of his Communist Manifesto declares that 'a spectre' (a spirit) has descended on the land, which he later describes as the spirit of communism.

Unfortunately a spirit has no place in a materialist ideology, so he describes the spirit as having to leave because it is a spirit of the communist system. Neither Communism nor a System can support a spirit. This bizarre doubleness has been criticized by many including Derrida.

Marx claimed the enemy of Communism was (what he called) 'subjective idealism'. The vagueries and elusivities of religion and spirituality were criminal opiates in this way of thinking.

And so he placed his dicotomies: communism versus capitalism, system vs. spirit, subjective idealism vs. objective materialism.

Another dicotomy he used to explain his system was a difference between 'use value' and 'exchange value'.

'Use value' can be defined as the value a thing has in terms of its utility.

A shovel can be used to move so much dirt in such an amount of time. A bulldozer can be used to move a great deal more dirt in the same time. A bulldozer therefore has more use value than a shovel.

Use value is objective. Everyone can witness a bulldozer move more dirt than a shovel, and, according to Marx, everyone ('the public' or 'society') can share in the prosperity.

By contrast Marx considered 'exchange value' to be an elusive, subjective criteria which is the basis of religion and subjectivity. A little boy goes to the store and decides to 'exchange' his allowance to buy a birthday present for his brother instead of candy.

In Marx's way of thinking, the (hidden and indirect) love of the little boy is a nice, warm thing, but of no use in constructing a political system.

Such a choice of the boy implies that he has the possibility of neglecting his brother's birthday (if it is really a choice). If all boys have the right to receive birthday gifts for their birthday, then there should be laws making sure all boys get the same birthday presents for their birthday.

And if those gifts are not the same, they should have the same 'use value'.

The aspect of 'it was his choice and he acted in love' is trivial and unreliable to Marx. In his view gifts of love should be replaced with redistribution to the point of equality for all.

Many atrocities have been commited with reference to this attitude.

As the citizens of Russia and China (both many years after Marx) came to accept these views they shared a commonality: millions upon millions of dead people.

During World War II the red state of Russia decided that if millions of its citizens were killed outright in purges, gulags, and semi-suicidal military campaigns it would be more "useful" to the country than avoiding these acts.

Stalin himself claimed that if one person died it was a tragedy. If a million people died it was a statistic.

The Russian state had no notion of what a single, innocent citizen could be 'exchanged' for. It had no interest in such a question. Exchange value was an elusive, spiritual, descretional thing which had no immediate benefit for the government.

The exchange worth of the individual was replaced with speculative, socialistic notions of what was best for so-called society.

Although there seems to be something mad, and truly wicked in accepting the purely objective Communist view of human worth it seems easier to accept than the paradoxical alternative: Christianity.

Christ prefers to leave the ninety-nine sheep -who do not need to be saved- so he can rescue the single sheep who has wandered off.

No human government -from the origin of man on earth to the present day- has ever rejoiced over a criminal who decides to obey the law. Government interest is more concerned with generalities: 'how bad is the crime in this country, generally?'

But Christ's priorities are completely different from every government, every social interest, every directly-understandable system. To this extent heaven rejoices over the single sinner that repents far more than the many who do not need to repent.

The paradox of the Bible, as Kierkegaard (the defender of subjectivity) noted, is that in Christianity the single individual is more important than the group.

The Bible also makes extensive use of the 'exchange value' question:

Do you want to be like Esau who exchanged his birthright for a bowl of soup? Do you want to be like Judas who exchanged his loyalty to Christ for money? Would you exchange the entire world for the possession of your soul?

The system asks choices of no one. It recognizes only the commonality, the group, the imaginary vagueness called the 'public'.

But the Bible is continually asking questions of its readers. Will you choose this day whom you will serve? Will you serve the flesh or the spirit? Will you bow to Ceasar or will you confess Christ?

Like the Communist system, it seems easier to give in. It seems easier to take the bowl of soup. It seems easier to take the money. It seems easier to gain the world.

The only drawback is a vague, inner notion that something is terribly wrong. And the Bible compares this to death.

From the perspective of exchange value: the meaning a man can find in life is to learn what matters to him and sticking to it.

Few people understand this.

But remember the world, the public, and the imaginary concept of society do not care a wooden nickel about what is important to a single person. The world demands everyone pursue its values, its system, its gimmicks, and its deceitfulness.

Or at least pretend to.

The one who recognizes the spiritual alternative to the system also realizes that apart from our ability to excerise personal descretion we are no more than mere robots carrying out the orders of an imaginary other.

The difference between such a living and true life is simply a matter of inwardness, obedience to the unseeable God, and mere devotion.

May God deliver us from such temptation, may He keep us from living a life of empty routine, may He continually teach and instruct his chosen ones of the wonder and mystery of His love as it works inside us.

Laundry List Christianity

A close friend once said to me, "I don't understand how the unchurched can stay married. They don't have marriage seminars or accountability partners. I just don't understand how their marriages can last!"

Although I didn't say it outloud, my response was, "I am amazed any marriage can last through those seminars and so-called accountability groups."

I can't speak for all marriage seminars, but most marital advice I hear is along the lines of:

Sure, love is a good thing to have, but you also need to be very organized
or
...you also need vast intellectual resources
or
...you need to kiss five times a day and talk for at least two hours and sixteen minutes
or
...you need to have a biblical view of the sacraments and of eschatology

The other day I was visiting the wikipedia article on Gothic Fiction and I wondered to myself what some of these characters would be like in one of these seminars or in an accountability group.

Consider Bronte's anti-hero from Wutherington Heights, Heathcliff. He was the one who desired a woman so strongly that he basically destroyed everyone who kept him from her. And then he destroyed the lives of their descendants.


What kind of advice would he receive at these so-called seminars?

If someone hurts your feelings, pretend like you don't care. Instead of making real enemies, make pretend-friends.

If your actions don't win approval from others, that's a red flag. You need to do more things that others approve of.

Be aware of other's rights. And don't physically hurt anyone.

In my mind, I can just imagine Heathcliff saying, "I was hunting down those who separated me from my Catherine, but now, instead, I will hunt down and destroy the lives of these phony people."

And of course people have responded in such a way. One recalls the murderer of John Lennon carrying a copy of The Catcher In the Rye. His point was, John: you're not fooling anyone. But most likely someone could have shot Mark Chapman and called him a phony too.

Punish the phony people. Check...

When I consider these seminars and speach-writers I think of those ancient sophists who sold knowledge at a price. Socrates used very simple, gadfly questions to demonstrate the educated had no advantage when it came to finding Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.

And the same must be asked of love. Does one grasp love better or become more loving by having more information? Or by reading more books? Or by following lists?

Is it not the case that these advantages are nothing and even a little child can easily discover love?

Consider the following passage written by an older Copenhagen judge, Vilhelm. Perhaps during his years as a husband he has caught a glimpse of the essential task in loving.

In education what matters is not that the child learns this or that, but that the spirit is matured, that energy is aroused. You often talk of how splendid a thing it is to have a good mind. Who will deny the importance of that?

And yet, I almost think one makes that for oneself if one wants.

Give a man energy, passion, and he has everything. Take a young girl, let her be silly, hysterical, a real chatterbox, imagine her falling deeply and sincerely in love and you will see that the good mind comes of itself, you will see how shrewd and cunning she becomes in finding out if love is requited; let her be happy in love and you will see ardour bloom on her lips; let her be unhappy and you will hear the cool reflections of wit and understanding ...
Vilhelm, Either Or.

His point is clear enough. People with full and meaningfull lives also seem to be rich in understanding, but an education itself is secondary to the task of living in a full and meaningful way.

In one of Plato's dialogs, the Meno, Socrates reflects on the way the seminar leaders of his day are unable to teach virtue. If virtue cannot be taught by human teachers he surmises that it can only be taught by the gods.

In the same way, the followers of Jesus Christ do not become disciples of love by listening to the peddlars of self-help lists and degree programs. To this end the Apostle writes, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God".

All the requirements hang on those two love commands. The final question everyone must answer to themselves: "Is love enough for me?". As soon as a person answers negatively he has opened the door to the laundry list lifestyle.

The Spinning World

Consider two aspects of the world.

First the world is continually spinning at a speed of four hundred sixty five miles per second at the equator. Every city travels entirely around the planet earth in a period of as little as twenty four hours.

And so a person wakes up in the morning, goes to work, goes to sleep at night, and then wakes up again in the morning. A man hungers so he eats, and when he is full he stops eating.

Is it a wonder that no one feels dizzy? Or perhaps they do in a sense.

A woman feels inclined to be with a man and they begin a relationship. She feels disinclined to be with that same man, and the relationship ends. A man finds a woman youthful, interesting, and beautiful and he initiates a relationship with her. Then the same woman no longer appears this way and the relationship is soon over.

This is the way of the world. One side of the earth is warmed by the sun while the dark side cools. Nothing in the world lasts, and it has two sides to everything.


The second thing about the world is the high speed it travels in an elliptical path around the sun. It travels one hundred and eight thousand kilometers per hour.

That means when the forward side of the earth reaches a certain point in space, the distance part of the earth is already there after seven minutes.

So-called enlightened thinking has gone so far as to claim that as time passes we are getting somewhere because of the great speed we are travelling.

Let us suppose a benevolent dictator decrees women may not be physically beaten by men. So much for the better for women.

There is however the question that lingers (even after no woman has been physically abused for centuries). The question asks, "Does anyone care about a particular woman any more as a result of this law?".

If not, the law may still be helpful, but can we really call that progress? In the same way, the world travels at great speed and always returns to the same place in its path around the sun.

And as Solomon writes, nothing is new under the sun.

The Bible says we are to be like Jesus: we should live in the world, but we are not to live of the world. John the apostle tells us everything of the world -the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes, the boasting of what a man has and does- come not from God.

The physical world spins and is always changing temperature, but we are not to be this way in spirit. We are not to be tossed around by our circumstances -blessing those who bless us and cursing those who curse us.

Love is eternal and has all it needs to love in itself. Love is not a passing fancy changing with the tides, but a commitment that lasts through the changing world and its hardships.

The physical world travels at great speed but always ends up where it started. In the same way people invent new fashions and new rules all the time, but they're just as corrupt on the inside as when they began.

Obedience to God means a total life commitment from the beginning. Jesus tells us that if we seek first the kingdom of God the other things will be given to us as well.

"In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."
John 16:33

The True Problem

Politics ... politics ...

Just when I think every concern has been solved - or at least addressed - new ones pop up and old ones develop new sub-concerns.

The accessibility of medicine for the elderly
The effects of global warming on remote jungle species
The broad ignorance about AIDS
The prevalence of war and military aggression in video games

But the truth is there is a sickness killing far more people than poor health care, global warming, AIDS, or war. Whatever your view on Iraq is, this disease has killed more people than all the wars in history combined. It has killed more people than all the murders combined. It has killed more people than global warming ever will. This sickness is far more serious than any issue I see touted in the news, and yet no one ever talks about it.

The sickness I am referring to is suicide. So far, the statistics I have mentioned are uncontested and not difficult to verify, but they are merely the tip of the iceberg. Camus once noted that people often put on masks, but suicide is a confession: a confession that their life was not worth living. Yet there are many who hate their lives silently without making such a confession.

And, of course, these people cannot be counted, recorded, or estimated in any statistic. It is hard enough for a person to be honest with another, let alone the task of being honest with oneself. For this reason a poll cannot convey even a glimpse of the magnitude of this problem.

Growing numbers of people are conscious of their despair, but how can this compare to the number of people who are unconscious of their despair?

Politicians often tell us what a burden it is to be poor, to breath dirty air, and to live in a high-crime area. And these things are burdens. But what a burden to hate one's own life!

Unfortunately no politician has offered any consolation to solve or even approach this problem.

As an example of the inability of politics to address this issue, I submit that the biggest governments are the ones with the highest suicide rates. The socialist governments of Europe have much higher suicide rates than the countries with smaller governments.

There is almost nothing the government can do to make a person's life worth living. Yet when the individual looks at his or her choices and decides to make changes, all things can become new.

The solution is this: to stop living to have a valuable life in the eyes of the public, to stop longing to be other people, to stop controlling other people as a substitute for controlling oneself.

Bertrand Russell on Confidence and Evidence

Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, logician, and mathematician.

I want to consider two quotes attributed to him. The purpose is to identify the voice of devotion, especially as it relates to the words of men who ask to be taken seriously.

Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say to God after he died. The question was something along the lines of, "Why didn't you believe in me?"

And Bertrand Russell responded:

"Not enough evidence, God. Not enough evidence."

In my opinion Bertrand Russell was making a very strong equivocation ... one so common that it is hardly noticable in our world today. When Bertrand Russell said "evidence" what he really meant was "external evidence".

If he would have responded more clearly, I could easily picture God asking, "Did you want to believe I was here, Bertrand? That I was right here around you all along?"

But of course, this question is totally irrelevant and biased in the mind of a mathematician or philosopher.

Suppose the question is asked, "Does 1 / x converge as x approaches infinity?". To a mathematician it may be of some significance to ask if "he thinks" it converges. Intuitions are occasionally valuable to mathematicians. To ask if "he wants" it to converge is outright heresy.

As Soren Kierkegaard is quick to point out in Philosophical Fragments a mathematician can say 'true' things all the time about formulas - by definition their truth has nothing to do with the mathematician.

But falling in love is totally different.

If you approach a man and ask, "Do you, sir, love this woman?" An analytical philosopher or mathematician might start out saying, "Well, the nature of women ..." Or "The essence of love is ...". But the question, "Do you, sir, love this woman?" Is not a question about the nature or attributes of women or love.

The question is about something inside the man. Isn't the question about believing to God identical to the love question?

Blaise Pascal -a mathematician himself- once noted that a convert who became a Christian on the basis of classical proofs was likely to be enthusiastic at first but soon to start checking and rechecking his logic. He concluded such a basis was often shaky at best.

And this brings us to the next quote from Bertrand Russell:

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

Bertrand Russell's observation lends itself to the age-old paradox that fools fall in love while the shrewd and crafty often become worse than criminals.

Why are the intelligent so full of doubt? Perhaps because they have so many ideas that as soon as they accept a view, a new idea comes along and pulls them in a different direction.

Why are the fools so confident? Perhaps because there is little to distract them from considering primarily what they want.

In some ways this latter quote is a sad reflection on who Bertrand Russell was. He was in some sense an intelligent man full of doubt. Perhaps his intelligence afforded him many things, but it could not -by his own admission- give him the clarity of a fool.

Jesus praised God because He had hidden His good things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children. Children don't need college degrees to "find out" if they love their parents.

Devotionally speaking, a person need not consult with philosophers and mathematicians to discover what his longings are: the true priorities deep inside him.

This is the evidence God wants us to find, and the only evidence which demands a verdict.

All Politics Come Up Short

This post is a bit different.

A lot of things go unsaid here. Right now I want to say something about how I don't say anything about one of the things left unsaid.

So far I have not revealed any of my political views on this blog. This has been very hard for me to do, and I'm always tempted to say something about politics. I link to a lot of blogs which discuss Christianity and politics.


Here's a glimpse of my mood about politics:

Suppose we lived in a world where there was no crime. Suppose this world had a clean environment. Let's suppose people paid no taxes and yet got a number of excellent government services. Everyone agreed with the foreign policy one hundred percent of all the time. Imagine unemployment did not exist in this utopian nation.

This is simply the best politics can promise us. And you know what? It has a major flaw. It is totally incapable of giving anyone the desire to get out of bed in the morning. No one is going to wake up and say, "Ah! There is no crime ... my life is worth living!".

We think these accomplishments will add value to life, but I am convinced they do not!

Certainly politicians do the best they can -atleast some do, I don't know for sure which ones. At the same time there is this vanity to politics that cannot be separated from it. So often a person can understand public policy but fail to understand their own personal life.

To me, that is a terrible loss.

People express to me their fear or gladness that a certain person is in office. Usually my response is political because I have strong political views. But sometimes I step back and wish to tell them, "Don't you know there is nothing new under the sun?".

Maybe that means I don't have strong political views.

In any case I find that however firmly I believe about a public policy issue, there is something stronger inside me that says, "It doesn't matter!!".

Don't get me wrong: it's okay for Christians to get elected into office. In fact I do my best to make sure it happens (yes, I vote). I think these leaders should do their best to express their Christianity through the policy they inact.

What is the line to be crossed? Simply this: when they say, "I am a Christian because I voted in such and such a way".

Eternity is infinitely more interested in one's opinion of how one should live personally, and not how the public is to be governed. We will each have to answer for the policies we hold ourselves to, and not the policies the government holds its citizens to.

I believe this distinction is profoundly important. People were constantly misunderstanding Jesus Christ for this very reason. They wanted to make him the King of Israel and then -much later- the King of their priorities.

Jesus makes the distinction between giving to the state what is the state's and giving to God what is God's. A distinction is not necessary except when two things are different. In this case Jesus separates the exterior world of public policy from the inner world of our hearts -which belong especially to God.

Personally I believe conservatives are tempted to say politics and obedience to God are identical because they want to give themselves a solid pat on the back -just for assenting to a bunch of ideas. Liberals are tempted to keep their obedience to God totally out of politics so they can get votes from those who openly approve of sin.

When one stands naked and alone before God, neither political conviction is advantageous.

Two writers who I have great respect for are Camus and Sartre. I firmly believe their failure to fully understand what it means to exist is related to how political they became. Sartre as a matter of fact gave up existentialism entirely so he could focus on communism.

I don't say that as an attack on communism. I say that as an attack on the failure of politics of every kind to explain to us who we are and what meaning we can find in an otherwise meaningless world.

What topics tempt me the most to write about? Abortion and homosexuality. Even though I have arrived at my opinion on these topics on the basis of what I find to be mere devotion, I realize that having the best view on these issues is very different from living a life of devotion.

And it kills me because inside me is a voice saying, "You are withholding your views on abortion and homosexuality because you want approval from men." And so, as a matter of conscience I sometimes post on other people's blogs what my true feelings are.

The most I can say here -in this place of mere devotion- is that one's views about homosexuality and abortion should be based soley in devotion to God however despised they are by men. Devotion, when it becomes serious, is obedient.

Having the best view on abortion and homosexuality is a triumph in understanding God's law. God has demanded that his servants are to live righteous lives, but understanding God's law is not the same thing as understanding the power of the Gospel.

One final thought: Jesus noted that the pagans love to hold power over one another. So too, the democrats love having power over republicans and republicans love to hold power over the democrats. A person cannot discover what it means to be born again by having power over others.

It is supremely a matter of how much self-control a person has.

The Hypocrite's Proverbs

During my years in college I did not smoke. I did not do drugs. I did not have sex with anyone. I had very little alcohol and only on breaks. I obeyed all the rules of the college I went to and then some. But my ways were evil, and my heart was full of disobedience.

Ultimately I blame myself for the sorrows I carried. To justify my ways to others (not to myself or God) I kept a very strict set of rules -perhaps you could call it a system. This system was not in conflict with any of my academic activities, in fact many people found such a systematic view to be acceptable and even honorable.

At a certain point God confronted me with my double-minded ways. In the pain of confronting my hypocrisies, I felt like God was telling me, 'I'm not after your systematic brain. It's your love that I require.' But I can't really put the way God said it in words. Not the way I heard it at least.

At any rate, after all this took place I wrote up a list of proverbs that hypocrites live by. A lot of the rules are the meaningless rules I heard people holding us to, but a lot of them are my own as well. God is doing a great work in my heart, and I am enjoying life a lot more!



Here are the Hypocrite's Proverbs:

Avoid mirrors at all costs. If you must look into a mirror, avoid looking into your own eyes. If you discover that someone you know looks in a mirror, refer to him or her as a narcissist.

Everywhere you go people are watching. If you travel to India, Paris, or Tokyo, you will find people. Therefore, if you must do the right thing, do it because people are watching you.

Join an accountability group. You are weak and you cannot choose the Good on your own. Therefore find as many acquaintances as possible to pressure and trick you into choosing the Good. Going through the motions of Christianity is just as good if not better than Christianity.

The most important thing is to talk about the Right thing, whether you believe it or not. Don't worry about being "for real". Tell people to do the Right thing even if you don't care about doing it yourself.

Keep tax collectors and prostitutes far from your acquaintance, but close to your mouth. Do not refer to them incessantly, but instead make subtle remarks about their indecencies. Remember that tax collectors and prostitutes are everywhere except within.

Make every effort to believe orthodox doctrine – the more obscure the better. After all, it is far easier to make distinctions in ten different kinds of grace than to believe for one moment that God has forgiven you.

Better to live in pretence than to admit open rebellion.

If you are a man, let the girls know that you don't believe in makeout sessions. This will make it easier to have makeout sessions with them.

If you are a woman, advise younger girls to commit to not dating for a semester and to eat lots of icecream in the cafeteria, but remember to never go near icecream because it could prevent you from finding a boyfriend.

The most important thing in preparing for death and the end of the world is to avoid considering death and the end of the world.

Always have a list of vaguely irrelevant principles to talk about. Rebuke your acquaintances when they don't finish their food in the cafeteria, or when people watch movies without first reading the book, or when people don't eat a balanced diet, or when a church doesn't have a liturgy. Tie up heavy burdens for men to carry, but do not lift a finger to help them. Refer to these principles as "scruples" and always pretend that they have something to do with the Right thing.

Use the words "appropriate" and "virtue" as many times as possible. Say things like, "Well, I don't play video games in my spare time because I follow virtue," or, "I don't wear spaghetti strap shirts because they're not appropriate." The words "virtue" and "appropriate" have the convenience of being able to mean everything and nothing.

Keep everything as abstract as possible. When someone says, "Were you hitting on my girlfriend?", Say something like, "Ideally speaking, a girlfriend would not respond to interferring gentlemen." Above all, never let your "Yes" mean "Yes" or your "No" mean "No".

Remember to be scientific and technical. When someone says, "What does death mean?" Answer: "Death is a result of vital organ failure." Remember that science and objectivity are the best evasions of all.

If you are a woman, be emotional and capricious as a principle. Whenever the impulse seizes you to comfort and console your friend do not resist. Whenever you desire to shout and rage and lose all composure do not stop to reflect about your raging. Keep your reflections far and your self farther.

Always practice dying to self. This will allow you to be controlled more by your influences and by others. The reason Christians carry crosses is really to remind themselves to disappear to themselves quietly as if they have no intention of living.

When exegeting a passage, always pay especially close attention to authorial intent, historical background, and the connotation. Take a deep breath and say, "This is not about me!" Then you will successfully prevent the passage from being personally interpreted and incorporated into your life.

If you are interested in dating a woman, plan lots of activities, give her lots of chocolates and flowers, open doors for her, and above all shower her every quality in bushels of poetry. If you do all this she will never have the faintest suspicion that you have no care for her whatsoever. Love is a talented deception, and it is far easier to be a gentleman than a lover.

The immortal soul sees Justice. The mortal body does not see Justice. Make it a point to let the soul pursue what it sees and the body to pursue what it sees. Do not consider any kind of spiritual relation between the two.

In the event that an authority commands something, accept it immediately without consideration. If anyone asks why you accepted the command say, "The authority has spoken, and we must accept their words unconditionally." Then do your best to forget hearing the command in the first place.

If you are a man, become a worship leader. Let the rhythm and sound carry you according to its own measure. If you must insist on anything, may it be in avoiding resolve of every kind.

If you are a woman, make a list of every man who talks to you during the day. When your friends ask you why you are writing down the names of men, tell them that it is a list of your stalkers.

During pains of reluctance or hesitation, always remember past spiritual achievements or future expectations – even if they are nothing more than exagerations. When poaching food from your roommate, just remember that you went on a mission trip in highschool. When seeing the needs of the poor, always remember that you can help them tomorrow. In all things avoid living in the moment.

Reverse the roles of freedom and necessity. When a woman wants to know why you love her, tell her she is irresistable. When she wants to know why you haven't carried out your commitments, tell her that you have the freedom to do whatever you want.

Get lots of things and lots of attention. Make your phylacteries wide and your tassels long. In your accumulation of everything to everyone, make sure that you never accumulate a self to catch your own attention.

The Mob Media

The media shows the tiniest percentage of what people do. There are millions and millions of people doing wonderful things all over the world, and they're generally not the ones being touted in the news.
Fred Rogers

I find there are two things to be taken from Mister Roger's observation.

The first is that if I'm going to really do something wonderful, it implies very few -if anyone- will notice it. Yet if I do something wonderful I find that I am more accepting of my choices ... and God is as well.

To be together with God on something doesn't exactly make a large group of people. And yet isn't it a blessed thing?

Everyone seems to want their fifteen minutes of fame, but who is willing to be obscure?

Who is willing to lead a life of devotion when no one is watching?
The other thing I find true in this passage is that the writings of the press (which always express the most apparent most interesting information) are hardly of consequence.

"That which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God."
Luke 16:15b

Sure the press reports on things that are "nice to know". The news tells us about things like foreign relations, the price of oil, and the next thing at the movies.

After having lived in Europe for some time I was greatly disappointed to see the role of the media there. People in Europe seem to evaluate everything (public figures, the government, morality, romance) on the basis of how popular it is. And to find this in a place that also brought us Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, and Sartre.

If a person wants to do something wonderful (and if he is devoted to this task) does this not also mean he will gladly sacrifice for this wonderful thing? And will he not be willing to endure the scorn of his generation for his devotion?

Popularity and global attention is no advantage to such a person.

Time will come to an end. Our lives will be laid bare before eternity, and how much will we wish we understood those things better? How much general news-worthy knowledge will we be responsible for?

The Big Solution

So often people look at Christianity and say, "Well, what kind of system is that supposed to be?" And, "How can we accept ideas like that?" And, "How can we make this into a form of government?".

Somehow these questions do not bring us any solutions to our problems - perhaps because these questions are the cause of our problems.

At some place I think everyone is well aware that life is mysterious. To some this is a very frustrating thing - an everlasting source of despair in fact. To others this is a beautiful, wonderful aspect of life.

Life is mysterious - perhaps one of the greatest mysteries. And so is love. When some people see love they rejoice! They say, "Here it is! This is the thing I have been searching for but could not describe!"

When we ask some of the "Why?" questions at God I think we should note a few things that are not His answer to our problems:

- A better government
- Explanations
- Education
- Technology
- A system of any kind

God's solution to our problems was a single, individual: Jesus Christ.

So the next time you face hardship remember that God's solution was not "better planning" or "better ideas" but a living person, Jesus Christ. And if you want to continue showing God's love in the spirit of His solution you need to also become a living person. You need to become like Jesus Christ.

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.

Monolithic Science

National Geographic recently published an article on how science is explaining love.

What Fisher saw fascinated her. When each subject looked at his or her loved one, the parts of the brain linked to reward and pleasure—the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus—lit up. What excited Fisher most was not so much finding a location, an address, for love as tracing its specific chemical pathways. Love lights up the caudate nucleus because it is home to a dense spread of receptors for a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which Fisher came to think of as part of our own endogenous love potion. In the right proportions, dopamine creates intense energy, exhilaration, focused attention, and motivation to win rewards. It is why, when you are newly in love, you can stay up all night, watch the sun rise, run a race, ski fast down a slope ordinarily too steep for your skill. Love makes you bold, makes you bright, makes you run real risks, which you sometimes survive, and sometimes you don't.

Reading the news I am inclined to think there are legions of concerned people who are fighting to save science from being taken over by religious fanatics. My question is, "Who is fighting to keep the mad scientists out of the spiritual domain?" When I was a first grader I thought science was about growing bean plants and using prisms to break up light. And now science is explaining love?

Are scientists progressing into greater depths or cheaper embelishments? If someone you know and care about is lacking love in their life, are they suggesting the solution is as simple as injecting dopamine into their brains? Imagine Charles Darwin on a date, "The reason you love me, baby, is that natural selection has taken all of the less healthy traits out of my ancestors ...". Sheer poetry! What sagely guides to lead us up out of the subjective valentine's day mire.

"Let God be proved right and every man a liar..."

In ancient times people associated themselves and built towers, pyramids, and castles - climbing higher and higher into the heavens. How can this compare to modern science's accomplishment of explaining love? The scope has changed, but the associating hasn't. When someone disagrees the media comes rushing in to assure us, "The vast majority of scientists are certain of global warming ... of evolution ... that love can be chemically explained".

Just check the wikipedia discussion pages [1] [2] on Intelligent Design and Evolution. These days the authority of science (which is so monolithic to some it can instantly crush Michael Crichton and Creationism) has nothing to do with empiricism or Baconian induction - it's the tight association of people who cling to one another.

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.