The Perilous Realm of Possibility

Humans do not like to fail, or to experience injury, and so we have developed a penchant for cleverly avoiding risk. We are clever when we assess situations with regard to the likelihood of injury (typically only with regard to the self), and we are foolish when we allow other concerns to cloud such clear and clever judgment. Before we even look to the world outside of ourselves to decide what our next move will be in the chess game of life, we first look to ourselves to assess what it is even possible to attempt to do. Better safe than sorry, or injured, or worst of all, foolish.

For instance, in principle humans would not even begin to seriously attempt to fly, knowing that we are land mammals, destined not to fly. We know our name, homo sapiens, and we named ourselves this because of our aforementioned cleverness. We know prior to any free imagination that the idea of human flight would be a fool’s errand, and it would be clever to invest in other ventures.

Yet, contrary to the principle of cleverness, humans have achieved flight. In the face of many dangers, humans have defied gravity. What was a principle of law, a boundary of possibility, turned out to be a mirage. Suddenly, a new virtue appears to contest with cleverness, and it is vision. The Wright brothers, among others, looked outside of themselves, at nature and other flying beasts, and caught a vision for the mechanics of flight. What is impossible for the human body, with its proportions of density and volume, becomes possible when it is helped from outside by materials alien to human nature.

I wonder, in regard to what matters most, if we are assessing our lives in the realm of possibility and cleverness, or if we have not yet caught a vision for what possibilities emerge when we start looking outside ourselves. Is it truly clever wise to name ourselves, to characterize ourselves as clever, calculating, and omniscient? After all, the tree does not try to be a tree, it just is a tree. Creation is not navel-gazing, but the nature of sin is to be man incurvatus in se.

Clever people look at themselves, searching for skills and strengths that might inform their assessment of the safe and profitable strategy.

People with vision look first, not at themselves, but at the destination. They venture forth looking for the impossible to become possible. 

Clever people bank on the status quo, hoping to stabilize the realm of possibility. Visionaries bank on reformation, hoping to realize the ideal.

If Christ is our destination, our origin, and our source of being, what type of people ought we to be? Is it any news to find out that it is impossible for humans, with our proportion of weakness and depravity, to follow in the way of Jesus Christ? What should we conclude then as we consider the divine imperative to seek the Kingdom of God? We should conclude that the righteous live by faith and that we work it out in fear and trembling. Let us give up our clever presuppositions of what the church can possibly be or do and look to Christ and His command and what the church is being made to be and do. He will give us a name and he will reform us to bear it. Christ commands us to love and bear with one another in forgiveness, confessing the Gospel in our lives together as a body.  The question is not how we will achieve it, but if we will attempt it. Our faithful endeavor is the evidence of the promise of fulfillment guaranteed by the work of the Holy Spirit. Soli Deo Gloria!

New season, new projects

It's been a while since I've blogged, but life has changed pretty drastically for me. I'm in a place of moving from vision to reality, from concept to practice. Seeking a form of wisdom the g(r)eeks called phronesis, which only becomes necessary when one is thinking in community. To break the ice off of an old and disused blog, I want to describe the shape of my life and to lay out some projects which I am going to write about here.

Sitz im Leben:

For the first season since infancy, I am not engaged with formal education. This means that I am working, and that my work is not something I am doing to "get through school", but rather is what occupies me. I cook at a cafe in downtown Lynchburg, called the White Hart. I am a 1/3 owner of the venture, which might be worth something in time. The real pay off is that it allows me the ability to stay in Lynchburg and be minimally employed while pursuing other interests. I work around 40 hours a week, but I spend a good portion of this work time chatting with and building relationships with people, which is the real priority of that time. I also spend significant time reading, also a priority. As such, the White Hart is an accidental, but a nice accidental to be sure.

When I'm not at the White Hart, I can almost always be found in community. I don't go "home" from work, since I take my work to be ministry to the ekklesia I am bound with. I am always in community. We feast and learn and recreate on Sundays, we meet for prayer, we meet for discussion, we meet for meals. And if I have things my way, we're going to be in community more-and-more in more-and-more meaningful ways in the future. We call our gathering Hill City Church, but this is just something I chose as an alternative to Converge, which is a word that leads to a long and interesting genealogy which would distract from this post....Pressing on, we consider ourselves a house church, except for the fact that we meet at the White Hart, which is a coffee shop. We do not apologize for being small, intentional, and radical. This means that we concern ourselves with discipleship to Jesus.

Out of this desire to follow Jesus, we are also endeavoring to establish a community house, in the rough outline of a Catholic Worker hospitality house, minus the shoddy theology. This means being downwardly mobile in loving, ie. moving toward, our slavery to Christ, in open rebellion to the commands of mammon. The house will come to exist in stages, and we are not quite in stage one yet.

Stage 1: Buy house. Get a community rhythm (eat together, pray together, pay of our debt together, work together, serve the poor together). Learn practical skills (gardening, baking, soap making, wood working, etc). Learn together (informal school of biblical languages, theology, and philosophy [and maybe pick up some instruments for music making as well]).

Stage 2: Create hospitality space (furnish basement with bunks, outdoor shower, etc). Practice sabbath and hospitality. Call disciples, live with the poor, work together. Create a network of churches and elders with a vision for the Church of Lynchburg and sabbath economics.

Stage 3: Buy farm land. Build house 2 if necessary. Create informal university (agronomic). Continue to experience the grace of God by planting, sowing, and feeding.

We are, God willing, about to close on the first house, so when I say we aren't IN stage 1 yet, it's trivially true. Also, this vision will take at least my lifetime to really see come to fruition, and possibly more. Further, this vision will require the help and contributions of many people from many gatherings in Lynchburg. This is much bigger than just myself, obviously. Lastly, the value of this isn't the hope that once stage 3 is completed, we will finally be able to "do" God's will, or to fulfill the Great Commission, which would be a false hope of utopia, the nowhere-place. Rather, it's the journey, through which we confess our adoration for God in our obedience to Christ, which is important. We may not make it all the way, but our lives, our Christ-adventure, will provide an apologetic which will be radiant and salty to the world, and which God may see fit to use to call many sons to resurrection. When we start to live trinitarian life, making Christ the mediator of all our relationships, the anxiety of success/failure becomes absurd. Seek first the kingdom...

The next post will outline some ways in which I will use this blog to formulate thoughts along the journey.

My 2 cents on "His Dark Materials"

Well, Christmas break is almost over for us LU students, but as always, Christmas break is a little too long. But, the length of the break has allowed me to read for pleasure, and so here I would like to comment on my reading of Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials. The movie "The Golden Compass", being recently released, is sure to complicate the issue here. Pullman's books are explicitly atheistic, yet critics say that this is largely obscured in the films. I haven't yet, and probably won't go see this movie, but not for any boycott reasons. I'm happily lazy when it comes to pop culture. But the books are of great interest to me, a theologically engaged christian, as they should be.

The books, first of all, are very well written. I don't know if it's just because Pullman is British, but the vocabulary used in the books is elevated much higher than any other youth-oriented fiction I've read, except perhaps LOTR. Not only this, but the story is told in an unabashed way, revealing ideas that are certainly controversial. This is certainly endearing to the slightly gifted teen who questions God and is tired of the tired rhetoric of their parents/pastors. It would seem that Mr. Pullman will give it to them straight, big words and all, even if their parents are too stupid or afraid to. This, I fear, is the greatest strength and danger of Pullman's underlying agenda.

He is not an entertainer, but rather sees himself as a liberator. I don't think for a moment that Pullman's ideology or worldview differs very much from that presented in his fiction. Here we have a sappy humanism which vilifies a caricatured God (straw man anyone?) and worships human advance, especially advance in technology and knowledge. I think Pullman's humanism is very powerful to today's audience, since it offers a story as rich as the Christian myth. It seems to say, "The fall really happened, and humanity is in danger, but you've got the protagonist/antagonist mixed up." Thus, Pullman finds the "merely churched" easy prey to this bait and switch. "Hey kids, are you wondering why you have sexual urges naturally and yet are told to deny them? Doesn't that seem unnatural and inconsistent with the view that your morality comes from the creator of Nature? Well, what if I told you that you can have casual sex and morality too! That way you can judge others for polluting and being hypocrites while finally being able to conscientiously give into "the flesh". After all, the flesh is the best part, isn't it? The angels only wish that they had flesh, so lets not delay in living to the fullest. Orgy time!" Honestly, I think that many people want to hear this message. They want to find a sophisticated way to sin. A way to say, "you know Mr. Pastor, I get your message, but I've weighed my options and I think that my way is right, and your's is the sinful one." Because, at that point we're not in the Christian ball park anymore. It becomes my word against yours, and to be perfectly honest, I'm more convincing.

I can say that I was a lot more comfortable with atheism as long as it was people like Dawkins and Hitchens who were in the liberal limelight. They are not nearly as affable or seemingly genuine. They both seem like alcoholics and excel at winning debates via comedy and fallacy rather than evidence. I don't think that when a person reads "God is Not Great", he will be convinced if he is not already an atheist. The new Atheism is largely a glad-handing movement in my opinion; people telling each other things they already agree upon. Pullman's books are much more dangerous. Tolkien, for instance, skillfully presented an ethos compatible with Christianity. His strength was that he could "backdoor" smuggle Christian truths into the readers mind, without labeling them as Christian. He could get you to be in awe of God's providence and his beautiful drama of the "free peoples", without admitting Christianity. He could get you to agree that Faramir and Aragorn are valiant and good, while Sauron is evil. He could further make you wish you were more like the valiant, and less like the evil. He makes us want, not to be heroes in vain, but to be heroic. He didn't do this by biblebashing or preaching, but he did it through telling tales. Rich tales. While I hesitate to put Pullman on a par with Tolkien (Pullman's derision of Tolkien's work seems to militate against Pullman's taste more than it tarnishes Tolkien), Pullman is doing many of the same things for atheism. He enables people to imagine a world where humans were unbridled. He gives crafty arguments that help people sidestep tricky counter-arguments to atheism. Out of Pullman's myth, one gets purpose, meaning, hope, and morality, and all without the nagging God. Not only this, but it also gives one ammunition to fire back at the Magisterium. I think a marginal Christian teen could read Pullman's trilogy and come out a fledgling atheist at heart.

Largely, this is due to the caricatured view of God presented in Pullman's books. If a student doesn't have a developed theology which shows a God who is worthy to be praised, then Pullman's books have real teeth. I fear that many teens will be bitten. But, in every adversity there is opportunity, and Pullman's books create a greater environment for sharing the true Gospel than others. While I don't think Dawkins and Co. are very convincing, they also don't set up a good stage for theological discussion. Pullman's books do. By asserting a more or less sophisticated theology (perhaps atheology) there is room for discussion rather than debate. Hopefully this trilogy will be a catalyst for serious thought about God. This is why, though I fear for weaker brothers, I welcome books like The Golden Compass. Christians should stop trying to protect God from atheists. He's bigger and stronger. We should be more offensive and less defensive. We should start believing in the ministry of the Holy Spirit and God's ability to make bad things, even bad people, good. After all, those who seek often find.

Apologetics

I recently attended a conference on apologetics in Charlotte, NC. In attendance guys like Norm Geisler, Gary Habermas, Chuck Colson, Josh McDowell, Erwin Lutzer, and even Dinesh D'Souza. Getting to see D'Souza was quite a treat. He's the author of the book What's So Great about Christianity, which is hot off the presses and selling big. In this book D'Souza is attacking the New Atheists, namely Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. What so interesting about D'Souza is that he's coming neither from a critical biblical background, like Habermas, nor from popular Christian apologetics, like, well, the rest of them. He's really a writer/debater in politics. He was definitely the best orator and he somehow packed roughly the equivalent of a basic undergrad apologetics course into about 40 minutes and still kept 4000 people interested. Not small feat to be sure.

But before I get off on a tangent, I am wondering if there is anyone else out there that is sensing a fundamental change in apologetics. I'm sure that if we look close enough, we can see change. Apologetics is inherently a work of response, response to culture and to science. It is, in a sense, impossible to see apologetics as a fixed or static science. It's admittedly ad hoc and what was the hot topic of yesteryear is not necessarily all that important nowadays. But I'm talking about a different type of change. At the conference, it was striking how little apologetics was discussed or taught on any level of content. I do not mean to say that the sessions were trivial, but to say that it seemed that most people were concerned with other things than new arguments. I would have to say that the conference was seemingly centered, in the sessions I personally attended, on the importance of relationships. Josh McDowell, especially, put forth a strong statement of the thesis that people don't care how much you know, unless they know how much you care. Now, anyone at Liberty, or any other seminary, has certainly heard this pithy statement more than enough times, but somehow when McDowell said it, I was sure he meant it.

What is seemingly implicit in this admission is that apologetics isn't, in the big picture, working. People seem to be infinitely capable of believing what they want in the face of good evidence to the contrary. I'm sure we've all dealt with people who are plagued with perennial doubts. They think, "If I can just get the doctrine of creation straight, I'll be sure." But, of course, they never get it straight, and while they're on the fence they pick up 20 or so other problems which must be answered in their minds before they'll commit to Christ. There are even, surely, people who do not have any good reasons for not believing. There are those non-committal atheists just as there are such Christians. Thus, the question I ask when I'm thinking about apologetics is, "Why even bother?" There is an elusive element in the conversion process, we'll call it the x-factor, which is that which breaks the camel's back, so-to-speak. The x-factor is that which separates those who commit to Christ from those who don't. I admit my Calvinism, so I'm not going to really "go there." But I am willing to propose a discussion in which we think about just what the x-factor is NOT. It seems that if we concede that relationships are more important than arguments, we're saying something about the x-factor here. I guess that the point is that the x-factor is not merely cognitive, but also at least somewhat emotional. McDowell seemed to be saying that it is the emotional tie that we have with people which allows us to make real progress in bringing people closer to Christ or farther from apathy. When we couple this message with the fact that I didn't more than one actual apologetic argument at the conference (I didn't attend all sessions however). Rather, most talks were on methodology. We can make two conclusions from this: either we have all the arguments we need and we just need to learn how to preface them, or the arguments aren't what is really important. The latter seems to be more true.

Here, I feel as though I need to explain a bit. The powerful thing for me is that there ARE arguments that the audience would have benefited to hear. One that comes to mind is Alvin Plantinga's justification of exclusivism. This would have been perhaps more beneficial devotionally than even as preparation for apologetics. There are plenty of new versions, revisions, etc. of the discussions that it was actually striking that the only message that I heard devoted to such an argument was Habermas' talk on the resurrection. The rest of the talks seemed to deal with doubt and relationship building. If you merely look at the discussions this year versus those of the last conference, the difference is striking. This might just be a fluke, but then again it might be a meaningful reaction.

I would guess that the Christian apologetic community as a whole is reeling and trying to figure out how to deal with these New Atheists. They're different from what we're used to. They are making bold claims and aren't really founding much of it on argumentation. The Atheists are really giving a cultural commentary with bits of conclusions placed sporadically. Many of these ideas are argued for in philosophy, but none of these new Atheists are philosophers (Harris has a BA in philosophy). They really just seem happy to preach to their choir of God-haters, jumping to conclusions in the most stylistic way possible. And they're good at it. The numbers on their book sales don't lie. But why might they present a new problem for apologetics if they are long on style but low on content? Aren't atheists supposed to be the smart ones? Isn't somebody holding these guys accountable? Maybe, but nobody's really doing anything about them from the atheistic side. So, what were left with is the problem of trying to fight celebrity with truth, and as we have seen in the recent past in politics, this battle is hard to fight. If there were any substance to their work, then we could attack that, but there isn't. We could put a guy like Habermas up against anyone of these guys and they would be utterly unable to defeat his argument, yet they can "win" by being funny in the eyes of the audience. We seem to think that if we can win the minds of american college students, we can win their hearts. But, and this is an important revelation, the minds of american college students aren't up for sale. Their minds follow their hearts, and right now their hearts are set against God. This is my best guess for the change I sensed, along with others, at the apologetics conference.

But, and this is really just vanity and speculation, winning peoples hearts is not really a viable goal for the Church either. How might we achieve this goal? Through celebrity? No. Through meeting felt needs? This is good, but also ineffective. Really, I could go on and on but there is no formula which always causes a heart to change. We all know this, if only for the fact that everyone is unique and so every heart resists God in different ways. In my opinion, it is only the Holy Spirit that can change a heart. We must do evangelism God's way if we want the Holy Spirit to work in our efforts, for he does not have to. This is why I have committed myself to a ministry of example and a heart of submission and humility. God is the only real evangelist, and I wonder how I ever thought it could be me.

Everyone needs some FotC Sometimes...

Andrew Peterson's "The Silence of God"

It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith
It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane
When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God

It'll shake a man's timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God

And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they've got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
'Cause we all get lost sometimes...

There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God

...good stuff...

What's Wrong with Second Best?

I recently had a conversation that made me rethink some "givens" in my life. My friend, Evan, expressed to me, with no idea of how this would effect me, how he had given up on settling in his life. He is about to graduate from Liberty with a BA in History, supposedly with the intention of teaching history at the high school level someday. Yet, Evan expressed to me the desire to switch his direction towards mission work. To Evan, life as a history teacher wouldn't be what he wanted, it would be too easy, too comfortable, and too boring. He is interested in history, but really this interest stems from an interest in culture and in people. Evan now plans to direct his energy and his interests into at least trying mission work. We both share an aversion to "short-term" missions, and so I don't want to mis-represent Evan as planning a week-long excursion to Jamaica where he'll pass out tracts on the beach, spreading the gospel after he spreads the suntan lotion. Evan inspired me, because I find myself in the same boat.

For a few years now I've been slowly resigning myself to a life of business. I once wanted a life of ministry, a life which couldn't be burdened by prioritizing money and materials, but had to be focused on people and the Gospel to succeed. But this is impractical, I tell myself. This isn't what God has for me, since he has gifted me with a knack for academics. I was told by a mentor when I was a young teen that ministry is a beast. That one shouldn't enter full-time ministry if there was anything else which one could do and be happy. Well, I guess I could teach philosophy and theology and be "happy". I guess, that, if I had to, I could teach high school history and maybe a humanities course here or there, and be happy. I guess I could really strive and find the perfect classical school, one where they taught Greek and Latin, and even philosophy to high schoolers. That would be the perfect blend of security and fulfillment. Because, you see, I don't want to be successful to the extent that it's become my idol. I'm not willing to sacrifice what God wants for a PhD, a job at a renowned university, or a dream to become a good philosopher. This conviction is motivated by both good and bad reasons, however, although on the outset it seems patently innocent. I have biblical reasons for this conviction, yet I fear that I am being determinately motivated here by fear. I am afraid of trying to attempt becoming professional about philosophy because at heart I fear that I am not good enough. And I don't mean this merely about my intelligence. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I am afraid that my faith is not strong enough to throw myself headlong into this community and not lose myself, and my God, in it. I don't think that I would ever drop my label of "Christian", but I know that my faith would develop and change. I'm just afraid that I'm not strong enough to thrive if I make my living among the thorns.

And now I've gotten myself in a pickle, because after a semester of work here at Liberty, I was running away from youth ministry and into the arms of philosophy. I was disappointed with the environment and the prospectus of being in YM, at least as Liberty presented it. I decided that I would work with the youth, but in a more formal role, as a teacher. I figure that while youth pastors are getting paid to entertain, as a teacher I would at least have a modicum of opportunity to speak seriously to students about life and value. Here, in the now, I am having the same trepidations as Evan. I too, am worried that in my posturing to be professional about ministry, I have become secular in my goals. I worry that I have lost the heart of my early vision for my life, and so in time I will find myself in a desert, being beaten by the sun without reprieve because I didn't plant myself beside a source of water. So, I am yet again, reaching out to God, asking for direction. I would like to be told, and provided with graphs if available, about my future. I want for God to give me that which would kill me. I want him to take away the mystery, but most of all I want him to tell me just how high I can dream, how far I can realistically reach. Because I'm tired of being self-conscious. I want God to tell me what I AM qualified for, because I don't feel qualified for much. But I guess I'm too smart to spend my nights crying this out to God, because I know that it's this difficult, somewhat-blind, decision that will define the character of my life. This crux, this climax, is what I'm supposedly alive for. If God were to just give me an answer, even if there isn't "THE ANSWER", he'd be taking the value away from my future. And so, I'm once again resigning myself to the tension. The tension that lies between being safe, and being needlessly, tragically, helplessly risky. Who wants to fail, but then again, who really wants to succeed. I guess that I do want to succeed, but I'm still so busy trying to define exactly what success is.

But now I exhale, and I laugh at myself and how complicated I can make things. In the pause of reflection I am able to enjoy a little reduction, to realize that if I just make God's will a priority, the priority, then I shouldn't be afraid to dream. This prioritizing has become all the more difficult since I've recently been married, and I'm happy to be so. While this marriage resolves many of the tensions of a single life, I can feel the creeping specter of american adulthood tapping my shoulder. I find myself justifying living a "normal-two-car-garage" life because now it's not for me, it's for my wife. I'm not being selfish, I'm not settling for second best, I'm providing for my wife. And even now I'm contemplating whether it isn't more protective, more honoring to my wife that I expect her to value the same life that I value when I'm at my best. Why do I assume that my striving to give the best for my wife should be or even could be at odds with what God has been showing me in my single life? If it was good for me to live meagerly, to be people-centered, and to be non-materialistic to the point of being un-American, then why isn't that good enough for my wife as well? This is perhaps the topic of another post. Regardless, I thank you if you read this post. This is, admittedly, a post more for me than for you, but its nice to know there are people out there. This was a bit revealing, since it shows me for the weak and scared kid that I am, and yet I'll never find courage if I don't do things like this. It's like Derek Webb said on his CD "The House Show", the best thing for us is that our sins and weaknesses be displayed. It is in this honesty that we find community, and in this bravery that we find strength. It is hard to find places appropriate for this type of disclosure, but I hope this is a good one.