Remembering Tom

For those of you who are unaware, I had to move my mother into an adult care home recently. Nan and I (mostly Nan) just finalized the sale of her double-wide mobile home, and today, as I was going through some of her things in preparation to storing them up in my attic, I came upon the eulogy I gave for my half-brother Tom, November 22, 1996. My mother had printed it out and put it in a plastic sleeve with a cover sheet on which was printed a graphic of a dove, the words, "In Loving Memory", and to which she pasted the tiny notice from the Oregonian obituary page of his death and funeral services at Lighthouse Mission Church in Portland.

I hadn't read this since I spoke these words almost twelve years ago, but was once again moved by the emotion and sentiment that inspired me to write it, and so thought it fitting to share it here.

Tom Mitchell was my brother. Our father was a preacher, so I guess it was natural that we both wanted to follow that same path. For me it was a stroll that ultimately led to a cul-de-sac, but for Tom it was a journey that lasted most of his life.

Aside from the fact that Tom and I had different mothers, our upbringings were quite different. Throughout his adolescence, Tom was raised by our father's sister and her husband, Aunt Flora and Uncle Burl, during which time, if I correctly recall my brother's stories, he rebelled against all things religious. He did, however, discover athletics and, with some distinction, ran the high hurdles and played football in high school. Once, when I saw among his things an old slide-rule in a worn leather case, he confided in me that his mathematical abilities were such that Lockheed had offered him a full scholarship to M.I.T. But professional athletics and aerospace engineering were not to be for Tom: when he converted from that most common religion of American adolescent males--an "angry young man"--to Christianity, Tom knew that the ministry was to be his life.

I know little of the beginnings of his ministry. I know he didn't attend Bible school or college of any kind. As to how or where he acquired his considerable preaching abilities, I'm at a loss, other than the belief that it was Tom's gift from God. I remember him mentioning from time to time that he worked for a short while at the paper mill in Moss Point, Mississippi where he had lived with Aunt Flora and Uncle Burl. But I presume that after that he began to preach and through whatever opportunities were afforded him by local pastors, and by virtue of his ardor and drive, never looked back.

My first memory of Tom was of when I was perhaps five years old. Tom would have been 21 or 22 then. He seemed huge to me, maybe because he was almost half a foot taller than our father; and with his bright red hair, and broad smile, and abundant catalogue of funny voices and faces, I thought he was the most wonderful person I had ever met. I loved him almost more than I could bear. When I was seven he taught me to play chess...chess to a seven year old: how he had the patience I will never know. But from that moment on I would beg him unmercifully to play with me. He always beat me horribly, of course. Even after we were grown, I only recall capturing his king once. But I always came back for more. I was playing with my big brother: that was payment enough for the most grim defeat.

When I was eight I took a long trip with Tom. We traveled from Yuma, Arizona to Dallas, Texas where the Church of God (the organization with which he was ordained) held its general assembly. After a week there, we went on to my Aunt Flora's and Uncle Burl's house in Moss Point, Mississippi where I was introduced to traditional Southern afternoon "dinner" (supper is the evening meal in the South) of black-eyed peas with ham hocks and cornbread sticks. And finally we went on to Tampa, Florida where I met Tom's very gracious mother, and my sister Susan. Again I fell madly in love.

When I was nine my sister Joanne came to visit, and I discovered that my brother Tom's singing was a family trait. She was for many years a member and often soloist in the Tampa Metropolitan Opera. She sang on my father's local Sunday afternoon TV show and the switchboard at the station was flooded with calls for the rest of the day. They continued to receive calls for weeks after from people wanting to know when she would sing again. Now I had two sisters and a brother to love.

Two years later I took another trip with Tom; this time to travel with him on the evangelistic field. We drove each other a little bit crazy: I was a slightly precocious and insufferably obnoxious child away from his parents, and he was a bachelor, by now set in his ways and used to coming and going as he pleased. But during the day we golfed together and played board games and practiced the guitar. And every night at church I would sing and "testify"--usually anecdotes and metaphorical stories I had plagiarized...from Tom, of course--and then sit and glory in the fire and passion of my bother's preaching. Never did he fail to move me. Never was he clumsy or tongue-tied. Night after night he wove elegant tapestries of words, sermons like symphonies in which each movement and variation built to a final crescendo of emotion. When, a few years after that, I began to preach, it was Tom, not my father, who was my ideal and pattern.

Tom was never to marry. There were a few close calls, but the demands and rigors of his first love--the ministry--always seemed to conflict with courtship. I believe he would have been a wonderful father. He seemed to me to be much better with children than I am. I remember how happy he was when my sons were born, how he indulged them and took interest in their most minor achievements. But if he had no children of his own, he certainly had no lack of surrogates. Of all the children in all the churches I ever visited with Tom, I never saw one who did not seem drawn to him or was not amused by the same easy manner of his that won me over as a child.

For many years Tom was like a wandering nomad, possessing only the few modest items he could pack into the truck of his car, relying on the hospitality of the churches at which he preached to provide him a bed. It was often a lonely exhausting life and at times an exercise in deprivation. He had no security, no savings, no retirement fund, no insurance, and no mate with whom to share his life. But always he was meeting people, helping people, reaching out, lifting up. My brother probably had more fiends than anyone I've ever met. And finally things began to get a little better for him. Finally, here in Portland, he found a place to plant at least one or two roots; a place where he could travel from and come back to. He had a long tenure as assistant pastor of Peninsular Open Bible Church under pastor Pearl Short. And later, after more very hard times, Tom returned to Portland and found his final home at Lighthouse Mission Church. It was a homecoming in more ways than one for Tom, like a great circle in the arc of his life; Dan Wold (the pastor of Lighthouse Mission Church) tells me that it was with his grandfather, dear Brother DeVrees--a wonderful man of God whom many of us, including me, remember with great affection--it was with Brother DeVrees that Tom got his start in evangelism.

I witnessed a change in Tom as he finally settled here. The life of a revivalist is a troublesome one, especially at the minimalist scope at which Tom operated--a life with which I am well acquainted, for I lived it with my father and mother throughout my adolescence. It is often filled with concern verging on desperation. Where is your next meeting? How will you get there? What do you do when a church cancels a two-week revival two days before you were supposed to start, and your checking account is empty? I won't bore you with Tom's financial troubles other than to say they were many and seemingly endless. The many years he spent on the road had taken its toll. But here in Portland, at Lighthouse Mission Church, finally he could begin to relax. He could experience the small routines that for most of us comprise the bulk of life. And he got to experience a new kind of travel: one different from the scrabbling-for-survival kind he had done in that past. Now he was able to go places he had only dreamed of before. I know he loved going to those far-off places--Kenya, Israel, Greece, Hong Kong--he always brought gifts back to all of us, and told us about the sights he had seen, the people he had met. And best of all, he had a place to come back to, a home in which to unpack his bags, shelves upon which he arrange his mementos.

Perhaps the most poignant fact of Tom's life was the love he engendered in those around him. Not just his family, though we did indeed love him--more than we can express--but also the overwhelming number of people he affected. I am proud of my brother that the measure of his life is not his possessions--for he had almost none; nor his industry--for though often a craftsman, that was not his vocation; or even his artistry--for though he did write songs and sermons, that was not his most noble achievement. The truest measure of my brother's life is the hundreds of people who knew and cared for him, and whose lives were enriched by his fellowship. That is a legacy that will far outlive possessions, or structures, or artistry. It is a legacy embedded in the lives of those whom he touched. It is a legacy of life. It is a legacy of love.

Wedding

Yesterday I had the honor and privilege of performing the wedding ceremony of my oldest son, Nigel, and his bride Janelle. I was quite moved when he asked me: first to be so considered by him, and second as it is a continuation of a tradition started by my father who performed my wedding ceremony.

I'm posting the ceremony here as a way of sharing my joy with anyone who wishes to read it. The greeting and vows are a slight reworking of traditional vows. The prayer and message were written by me.



Greeting

Dear friends, out of affection for Nigel Mitchell and Janelle Clark we have gathered together to witness and bless their mutual vows which will unite them in marriage. To this moment they bring the fullness of their hearts as a treasure to share with one another. They bring the dreams which bind them together. They bring that particular personality and spirit which is uniquely their own, and out of which will grow the reality of their life together. We rejoice with them as the outward symbol of an inward union of hearts, a union, blessed by God, created by friendship, respect and love.

No person should attend a wedding without giving thanks to God for the sacrament of marriage, and renewing in his heart the vows that are being taken for the first time by others. No person should leave without doing that for which he came..... praying that God's blessing may truly rest upon this man and this woman all the days of their life together. As you pray, so may you also receive a blessing. And so, let us pray:

Heavenly Father, as we have gathered to witness and celebrate the union of Nigel and Janelle in holy matrimony we pray your blessing and goodwill on their lives; we pray that your grace would envelop them, that your providence would protect them, that your word would guide them, and that your love would inspire them. This we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Wedding message

Marriage has existed throughout human history, and whether we take the language of Genesis to be literal or figurative, the principle is the same: that God himself determined that it was not good for man to be alone. "So God created man in his own image; male and female he created them." Countless centuries later, Jesus clarified God's intentions and authenticated a Christian ethic of marriage which has informed Western Civilization's view, not just of the sacredness of marriage, but the responsibility and accountability of men and the dignity and humanity of women, elevated from the status of chattel characterized by so many pre-christian and non-christian cultures. In the Gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus said, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh?' So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."

Fundamental to this Christian ethic is that, rather than property acquisition, social status, or business or political alliance, marriage is to be based on love. The apostle Paul put it this way in his letter to the Ephesians: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church..."

It's fitting that this, perhaps most radical idea of all--that this life-long commitment and bonding of family should find its source in mutual love--is the one we most revere. It fuels our stories--our literature, films, poetry, music--indeed almost all of our art. And it's why, today, we have gathered to celebrate this declaration of love, and these vows of commitment.


Wedding vows: Nigel & Janelle face each other join right hands



(to the Groom)  Do you, Nigel Mitchell, in the presence of God,family and friends, promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, this woman whose right hand you now hold?  Do you promise to be to her in all things a true and faithful husband, to be devoted to her, and to her only, as long as life shall last? And do you take her to be your lawful, wedded wife, as long as you both shall live?   (He answers “I do.”)
 
(to the Bride)  Do you, Janelle Clark, in the presence of God, family and friends, promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity, this man whose right hand you now hold?  Do you promise to be to him in all things a true and faithful wife, to be devoted to him, and to him only, as long as life shall last?  Do you take him to be your lawfully, wedded husband, as long as you both shall live?   (She answers, “I do.”)

Ring vows

Let us pray. Bless, O Lord, the giving and receiving of these rings. May Nigel and Janelle abide in Your peace and grow in their knowledge of Your presence through their loving union. May the seamless circle of these rings become the symbol of their enduring love and serve to remind them of the holy covenant into which they have entered today to be faithful, loving, and kind to each other. Dear God, may they live in Your grace and be forever true to this union. Amen.

(to the groom) Nigel, repeat after me: "Janelle, I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows, ...and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you. ...In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. ...With this ring, I thee wed."

(to the bride) Janelle, repeat after me: "Nigel, I give you this ring as a symbol of our vows, ...and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you. ...In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. ...With this ring, I thee wed."

Pronouncement

Nigel and Janelle, you are now man and wife according to the witness of this assembly and the law of Oregon. Become one, Fulfill your promises. Love and serve the Lord. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. You may kiss the bride.



Presentation of the couple

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you mister and misses Nigel Mitchell!

The Law of Love

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.(James 2:8-11 ESV)

A prevalent concept among evangelicals is that the law of Moses was superseded by Jesus with a simple ethic of love; as though all one has to do under the new covenant of Christ is love God and all the rest will take care of itself. One unspoken implication of this is an interpretation of love as a sentiment. In other words, have the right emotions, feel a certain way, and you're okay. As if this were not bad enough, a more crucial implication is that this idea of loving God is something that Jesus introduced as distinct and different from the law of Moses. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When the lawyer asked Jesus what the greatest commandment of the Law was, and Jesus answered,"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets,"(Matthew 22:37-40 ESV), Jesus was actually quoting the law himself, specifically Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Consider, for instance, that in the Gospel of Luke the tables are turned and Jesus asks a lawyer, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?", and the lawyer answers with the same two verses. What Jesus and all his Mosaic Law scholar-interrogators understood perfectly well was that love was not distinct from the Law: it was the law. All the rest of it, the rules, and commandments and prohibitions were merely the practical outworking of that law of love.

The radical part of Jesus' message was to identify how pallid and compromised human interpretation of that law had become, and how hopeless it was to achieve by self-righteous effort. When Jesus assented to the lawyer's answer, and the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29), Jesus answered him with the parable of the good Samaritan, an object of racial loathing by pious Jews of the day.

When Jesus told his disciples how difficult it would be for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God, they despaired: "Who then can be saved" But Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:25,26 ESV)

This is the hopeless dilemma of man the apostle Paul spoke of: For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, (Romans 7:22,23 ESV)

Judged by this law of love, when I look to my own self I see what a pathetic and degenerate sinner I am, thoroughly lost without God's grace and the justification of Christ; for if I am commanded, in the very first and most important commandment, to love God with all my being, I cannot in all honesty, identify even one moment when I have loved God with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind.

...who on earth can set me free from the clutches of my sinful nature? I thank God there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord.
No condemnation now hangs over the head of those who are "in" Jesus Christ. For the new spiritual principle of life "in" Christ lifts me out of the old vicious circle of sin and death.
The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness - the failure was always the weakness of human nature. But God has met this by sending his own Son Jesus Christ to live in that human nature which causes the trouble. And, while Christ was actually taking upon himself the sins of men, God condemned that sinful nature. (Romans 7:24-8:3 Phillips translation)

But now we are seeing the righteousness of God declared quite apart from the Law (though amply testified to by both Law and Prophets) - it is a righteousness imparted to, and operating in, all who have faith in Jesus Christ. (For there is no distinction to be made anywhere: everyone has sinned, everyone falls short of the beauty of God's plan.) Under this divine system a man who has faith is now freely acquitted in the eyes of God by his generous dealing in the redemptive act of Jesus Christ. God has appointed him as the means of propitiation, a propitiation accomplished by the shedding of his blood, to be received and made effective in ourselves by faith. God has done this to demonstrate his righteousness both by the wiping out of the sins of the past (the time when he withheld his hand), and by showing in the present time that he is a just God and that he justifies every man who has faith in Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:21-26 Phillips translation)

Awe

Holy and awesome is his name! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever! (Psalms 111:9,10 ESV)

It seems to me at times that with some of our contemporary forms of worship we are losing a sense of awe for God. The use of "boyfriend-girlfriend" language in worship songs can inspire many emotions--tenderness, affection, even gratitude--but not awe.

There is a sense of familiarity with God implied in Jesus' use of the pronoun "Abba," (which is more accurately analogous to "Papa" rather than "Daddy" as some have claimed), but there is a danger in overemphasizing this familiarity if, with it, we lose the proper sense of fear and self-abasement included in our necessary awe of God.

Trends within the American Evangelical movement pull in this direction, one of the most influential being the "seeker sensitive" template of church service pioneered by Willow Creek Community Church in one of the suburbs of Chicago. The motive behind it has the best of intentions: evangelical outreach. The theory was to make "church" less intimidating and off-putting to the non-believer. Willow Creek did extensive market research of the Madison Avenue type (surveys and focus groups) to arrive at a form of church obsevance that would serve that end. Music should be contemporary rock and pop styling, no old hymns or archaic language. Clothing should be casual--no robes for the ministers, no suits or formal dresses for the laity. And most of all, anonymity. Visitors should not be identified, acknowledged or approached by anyone before, during, or after the service, but all contact should be done strictly through a card the visitor can fill out on a voluntary basis.

To whatever degree this template has been successful in evangelical outreach, I find it troubling that little thought seems to be given to the result this has had on the body of believers. Obvious questions present themselves: is Christian worship service really the best venue for evangelical outreach? Should we really accommodate worship to the popular culture so as to make it palatable to the nonbeliever? Are we diluting worship and ministry to the body of Christ by appealing to a non-spiritual--or even non-christian--cultural common denominator?

Jesus often warned that aspects of the Gospel were loathsome to the world, warned that there was a cost to being his follower.

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.(John 15:18 ESV)

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26 ESV)

This last quotation--obviously, I think, an example of hyperbole--is ripe for misinterpretation, yet a perfect example of the appropriate self-effacement essential to an awe of God; also a perfect example of an attitude abhorrent to contemporary culture. If there is anything our culture affirms to us, it is that we should love ourselves, that we should put ourselves first, that we "owe" ourselves the best and the most. Against this backdrop Jesus gives the horrifying command that we place ourselves last.

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:26-28 ESV)

As I discussed this post with my wife, she challenged me: "how would you do things different?"

Fair enough. Let me offer these humble suggestions:

1. More depth and demanding lyric content in worship music. There is a long and established history of Christian worship music conforming to the prevailing style of the day; as the story goes, Martin Luther wrote A Mighty Fortress is our God to the tune of a common drinking song of his time, so I am not arguing against contemporary music, but rather contemporary lyric style. One of the marks of American pop music, whether it be rock, folk, country, or even show tunes, is repetition. Much of contemporary worship music has borrowed this lyric convention from popular music--to its severe detriment, I submit. And so we often have one or two short verses and a chorus that is repeated, sometimes ad nauseam. Some Christian authors engaged in this debate have called such music, "happy clappy." I have already made reference to "boyfriend-girlfriend" language in worship music; I think the avoidance of romantic and sentimental language in worship music would also be an important move. Let me offer this challenge as an illustration: find one contemporary worship song that demonstrates even half of the depth and theological content of the six verses of Amazing Grace.

2. More formality. I think it a testament to how counter to popular culture this idea is, that I feel almost self-reproachful in writing those words. (I imagine eyes rolling and the heaving of deep sighs from those of you who read this.) Nevertheless, I remain firm: yes, more formality: formality in dress, formality in speech, formality in manners. I'm not going to say much about this, I'd just like you to consider it, to ponder what this might mean, and what effect it might have on our children.

3. More sobriety in mood. What I mean by this is more of a balance or, perhaps a broader spectrum of emotion within worship. Contemporary worship seems almost entirely focused on the "up" side of the emotional range. An even cursory reading of the Psalms will demonstrate that Biblical worship encompasses all of human emotion, the dirge as well as the song of joy.

So then, my dearest friends, as you have always followed my advice - and that not only when I was present to give it - so now that I am far away be keener than ever to work out the salvation that God has given you with a proper sense of awe and responsibility. For it is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and the power to achieve his purpose. (Philippians 2:12,13 the J.B. Phillips translation)

Expelled!

I just came home from watching Ben Stein's new documentary "Expelled." You might remember Stein from his performance in the 80s teen movie Ferris Bueler's Day Off as the dead-pan teacher asking hopelessly, "anyone? anyone?," or his TV game show on the Comedy Central channel, Ben Stein's Money, or his commentaries on the TV show Sunday Morning. In Expelled Stein examines the ideological stranglehold that the established scientific and academic communities have in deciding orthodoxy with regard to Darwinist evolution to the absolute exclusion of the incipient Intelligent Design movement. The previous sentence implies a dry sort of clinical approach, but Stein's demeanor, and especially the director's adroit use of inter-cut clips from old black and white films--quite a few of which seem to be 50s era grade school instructionals--give the movie real, at times laugh-out-loud, humor.

Stein interviews many leading lights in the Intelligent Design movement, as well as its most ardent detractors: Dennet, Hitchens, Dawkins and Eugenie Scott, head of an organization whose whole existence is devoted to excluding Intelligent Design from the American classroom and preserving Dawinism as educational dogma, the National Center For Science Education.

Perhaps his primary focus, however, is with interviewing scientists, academics,and even journalists who have been ostracized, ridiculed, denied tenure, fired and then blacklisted for the mere passing mention of the possible validity of Intelligent Design.

There is, as well, a fascinating, if disturbing and all too short, examination of the darkest historical consequences of Dawinism: the Eugenics movement in the United States in which, after the tireless lobbying of Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) many thousands of retarded Americans were forcibly sterilized, and in Nazi Germany 70,000 retarded, genetically handicapped, or people otherwise deemed by the state as "useless eaters" were gassed and cremated in the interest of strengthening humanity.

The film is capped off by an interview with Richard Dawkins that proves squirm-inducing with embarrassing humor when this most caustic and vituperative voice in opposition to all things God--author of The God Delusion in which he asserts that religious instruction of children is a form of child abuse and should be made illegal--finally admits that Intelligent Design might eventually prove to be true, but only if the intelligent designer turns out to be--(I'm not kidding)--an advanced extra-terrestrial race who must have itself derived from the non-determinate forces of natural selection (Dawinism).

I was thrilled at this movie because it's something I've never seen before: a film with nationwide release with excellent production values, humor and skill, from a conservative and monotheistic viewpoint. I want to see more films like this. Many, many more. With that in mind I'm encouraging all my friends, acquaintances, and anyone else whose ear I can get, to go see this film. Don't wait for it to come out on video. If everyone does that it will ensure that any similar future projects will only be released on video. The way to support good art, the way to encourage more good art, is to buy it.

Creature or Creator?

It is not that they do not know the truth about God; indeed he has made it quite plain to them. For since the beginning of the world the invisible attributes of God, e.g. his eternal power and divinity, have been plainly discernible through things which he has made and which are commonly seen and known... (Romans 1:19,20 Phillips translation)
It's a long held understanding in Christian teaching that one of the ways in which man shares in God's image is that he creates; and certainly one of the things man creates is art. Sacred themes are so dominant in the history of the art of Western civilization that they far outnumbered secular subjects for many centuries. The Renaissance in Southern Europe and the Reformation in Northern Europe brought the most pronounced changes in this regard, but with different outcomes as argued by Francis Schaeffer in How Should We Then Live? Both still held God as the sovereign creator, and celebrated the sacred with perhaps the most superlative craft, artistic achievement, and beauty ever produced by human hands. See, for example, from Southern Europe, Carrivaggio's Madonna of the Rosary:


And from Northern (Reformation) Europe, Rembrandt's Abraham and Isaac:



However, Southern Europe perpetuated the secular/sacred divide taught by prior generations of theologians, followed the humanist philosophical thread of the Renaissance by such philosophers as Erasmus that eventually lead to the centrality of man in the Enlightenment. The Reformation theologians, by placing scripture in ascendancy over tradition and the hierarchy of the clergy, taught a worldview that denied a secular/sacred divide, that instead affirmed that all vocations were in equal service to God. In this view all representations of God's beautiful creation, that through the skill of the painter celebrated that creation, were acts of worship. So then even the domestic scenes of Vermeer, who, although he had converted to his wife's Catholicism nevertheless painted for a reformed christian clientele, were seen as glorifying to God. Or Albrecht Durer's Young Hare



is of equivalent reverence as his Praying Hands.




As the atheistic philosophers of the Enlightenment began to exert more and more influence in the circles of the intelligentsia of Europe, some of the first to reflect this thinking empirically in their work were artists. Detached from God and any consideration of his creation, the underlying motive was no longer a celebration of beauty and the extant creation, but a celebration of the artist's inner vision. The goal was no longer to represent the truth of an objective reality, but to conceive an object of originality from the artist's unique perceptions. This started first with mere distortion of the visible world with the Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Post-Impressionists Van Gogh, Cezzane & Seurat followed quickly on their heels. Observe the fragmentation of form and color in Van Gogh's Starry Night, and its shattering difference from the paintings above:




Even at this, there was still a tenuous connection to the real world, distorted as it was--but it wasn't to last long. As the culture became increasingly removed from God, and any remnants of faith more compartmentalized in the artist's worldview, painting became more and more idiosyncratic so that all connection to reality was sacrificed to the goal of originality, novelty and the artist's conceptions. Abstract Expressionism, Cubism and a host of other "schools" of painting flourished in the fine art world. In the 1930s Jackson Pollock made a "splash" on the New York art scene with his drip style of painting.




It is something of the ultimate idiosyncrasy, born of whim, chance, and seemly thoughtless kinetic expression, without the slightest intent to represent anything other than what the observer sees: a random and disorganized mix of color and contrast that Pollock called simply, No. 5. But even this pales to Shawn Eichman's National Endowment for the Arts funded piece she called the "Alchemy Cabinet," which displayed her own dismembered second-trimester aborted baby next to the obligatory twisted wire coat hanger.

When we apply Paul's injunction to the Colossian church--Whatever you do, put your whole heart and soul into it, as into work done for God, and not merely for men - knowing that your real reward, a heavenly one, will come from God, since you are actually employed by Christ, (Colossians 3:23,24 Phillips translation)--we can exercise creativity, whether in the industrial, service, or fine arts, and know that we are participating in the nature of God, and even worshiping God by our work. If, however, we take the view that our work is something separate from our relationship with God, that our work life resides in a compartment delineated from our faith life, we run the risk of going down the path that has lead to the abominations that are so much of modern art.

...whatever you do, eating or drinking or anything else, everything should be done to bring glory to God. (1 Corinthians 10:31 Phillips translation)

Eulogy for Uncle Bud

My wife's uncle "Bud" Throckmorton just passed away in Colorado Springs. The following is a eulogy I gave for Bud at a family memorial service we had here in Tigard, Oregon at my sister's-in-law house.

I knew very little about Uncle Bud other than his quiet demeanor and his occasional dry wit, so I called Uncle John the other night and asked him to tell me what he could remember. It seems John was a very young child when Bud shipped off to Europe in World War II, so he has no memory of him until his return from the war. He was able to tell me little about Bud's war experience other than he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded the bronze star, since Bud was reluctant to ever speak of what he had seen or done. He had had long talks with Grandma Throckmorton when he first got back, but then rarely ever spoke of it again. And whatever he told her went with her to her grave.

Soon after his return, Uncle John, Grandma and Grandpa Throckmorton went to Venezuela for a year, leaving Bud and Great Grandpa McChesney (Grandma Throckmorton's father) to take care of the farm. Bud found, during that year, that he loathed farming which he called "dirt grubbing."

He married his first real girlfriend, Aunt Jean, whose ambition was to have 10 children--they only made it to 7. With all those mouths to feed, hunting was a necessary supplement to the family food budget. It was a skill he had honed from prior necessity during his childhood during the Great Depression. John said that during hunting season, he would often leave before dawn during work days to hunt a few hours before heading to his job. Venison was a family staple.

I'm sure there a thousand examples of this kind of stoic practicality in Bud's life, a man who was typical of his time, who answered the call of his country to war and without complaint, endured its horrors, then returned and set about the business of raising a family, getting the things done that needed doing--but I can only guess at them. He didn't leave a written record, or, if the few pictures Nan was able to find of him is any example, much of a pictorial one either. But he left the legacy of 7 children and the 50 plus years as a faithful husband of one wife. I guess that will speak better than any words he might have written, or that any of us can say.

One bitter-sweet detail that John told me is that at the end, as Bud knew his time was short, he expressed the fear that the things he had been obliged to do during the war would prevent his entrance to heaven. I'm saddened to think that the gospel message had not been made clear to him that it is not our good deeds that gains us access to God's presence, but God's grace through Jesus Christ, as Paul said to the Ephesian Christians, "...he shows for all time the tremendous generosity of the grace and kindness he has expressed towards us in Christ Jesus. It was nothing you could or did achieve - it was God's gift to you. No one can pride himself upon earning the love of God. The fact is that what we are we owe to the hand of God upon us." (Ephesians 2:7-9 Phillips translation) And the apostle John said, "...the blood which his Son shed for us keeps us clean from all sin. If we refuse to admit that we are sinners, then we live in a world of illusion and truth becomes a stranger to us. But if we freely admit that we have sinned, we find God utterly reliable and straightforward - he forgives our sins and makes us thoroughly clean from all that is evil." (1 John 1:7-9 Phillips translation)

Uncle John said someone--I don't remember who--set his mind at ease. So now, after all the hardships and good times, the disappointments and joys, and after all the plain hard work of his life, I hope Bud has finally entered the rest promised in the letter to the Hebrews, "There still exists, therefore, a full and complete rest for the people of God. And he who experiences his real rest is resting from his own work as fully as God from his." (Hebrews 4:9&10 Phillips translation)

Benevolence or Ego?

So, God created humans simply so that we could worship him? Why bother? That seems like the height of narcissism. (A comment from an atheist participant to an online forum on theology)

As our culture proceeds down the path of ever increasing secularism and the knowledge of Christian orthodoxy disappears from the popular psyche, statements like the one above will proliferate. Such sentiments are helped along by the new batch of belligerent atheists residing on the best-seller's lists who are not satisfied with simply repeating the arguments of Bertrand Russell against the existence of God, but seemed determined to indict the very idea of God as a fount of evil. So Richard Dawkins characterizes the instruction of children in Christian faith as a form of child abuse, and Christopher Hitchens titles his book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

This kind of rhetoric can leave those of us who understand God as the source of all that is good and just and loving in our existence in a kind of stunned silence. It can be difficult to know where to even begin to defend God's fundamental goodness against this kind of rancorous assault, yet that is our challenge, and indeed our mandate from scripture: always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you(1 Peter 3:15 ESV).

Certainly some of the problem with answering such statements as the one above is that the truth of the matter is so self-evident it's hard to formulate an answer, such as when a child asks why the sky is blue followed by an interminable succession of "why?" questions; the temptation is to answer, "because I say so!" And perhaps in my analogy lies the real answer after all.

To think that our obligation to worship God means that God was narcissistic in creating us is equivalent to a child considering her parents narcissistic for having her and then demanding obedience.  This attitude in the child is actually due to her inability to interpret the world around her by any other criteria than by how it directly affects her. She sees her parent’s demand of obedience as being unfair; indeed, if the world does not conform to her comfort and immediate desires, even the world is unfair.  We call this self-centeredness.  If she could see her situation from her parent’s perspective, she would understand that her parents had her as an expression of their love--that their love wanted to expand to include another, and that their demands of her obedience is for her good, and, in reality, another expression of their love.

The seed of seeing God as a narcissist is our resentment in having to give up the center stage. One can almost hear the petulant mewling of the child, "but what about me?"

Coupled with this is a constricted and anthropomorphic vision of God. If He is seen as the angry old man with the long white beard frowning at all our fun and casting down thunderbolts from on high--a common caricature by popular media--He becomes that much easier to resent.

Of course the biblical vision of God is one that stretches our perceptions to their limits, and perhaps beyond. It is a vision of unsurpassable power:

Who has measured the oceans by using the palm of his hand?
Who has used the width of his hand to mark off the sky? 
Who has measured out the dust of the earth in a basket? 
Who has weighed the mountains on scales? 
Who has weighed the hills in a balance? 
Who can ever understand what is in the Lord's mind? 
Who can ever give him advice? 
Did the Lord have to ask anyone to help him understand? 
Did he have to ask someone to teach him the right way? 
Who taught him what he knows? 
Who showed him how to understand?
The nations are only a drop in a bucket to him. 
He considers them as nothing but dust on the scales. 
He weighs the islands as if they were only fine dust. (Isaiah 40:12-15 New International Readers Version)

But it is also a vision of incomparable love:

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born again because of what God has done. That person knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
How did God show his love for us? He sent his one and only Son into the world. He sent him so we could receive life through him.
What is love? It is not that we loved God. It is that he loved us and sent his Son to give his life to pay for our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we should also love one another. No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us. His love is made complete in us.
We know that we belong to him and he belongs to us. He has given us his Holy Spirit.
The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. (1 John 4:7-14 New International Reader's Version)

Unlike the unitarian view of God, such as Islam, the trinitarian view of God revealed in the Bible shows us that God existed in a state of love within his own being expressed among the three persons of the Godhead. The statement written above by the Apostle John, "God is love," is never made about Allah, and indeed could not be made. But when we read in Genesis that God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness," it bears a striking resemblance to the creation of children by a husband and wife who wish to enlarge the love already shared between to two of them. It is not the attentive and disciplining parents whom we characterize as narcissistic, but those who give over to hired help the raising of their children.

We worship God because He created us in an act of love, because He provided all the beauty and wonder of our world we enjoy, because even after we separated ourselves from Him in rebellion, He provided a second chance to be reconciled to Him through Christ. Does He demand our worship? Yes. He even demands our love. But just as loving parents must demand obedience and respect from their children, even that is an act of His love, and meant for our good.

"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being." (Revelation 4:11 NIV)

Fall at His Feet

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” John 20:27,28 NIV

It is common these days (and I suspect, has been for quite some time) to view Jesus as something of a sage or philosopher, a guy who had a lot of good ideas about how one should live a just and moral life. It's possible that it's equally common for people who identify themselves as Christian, do so on the basis of their subscription to the wisdom and--well, "truth" is too restrictive a word due to the contemporary notions of moral relativism and the subjective nature of truth--let's say "appropriateness" of his teachings.

Many have pointed out that Jesus doesn't leave one this option. As C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not a be great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."

But of course people rationalize this away all time by asserting that all the claims to divinity by Jesus were added later by either the writers of the Gospels or copiers centuries later. The wealth of scholarship affirming the reliability of the Biblical canon is ignored by such. Once this path is taken, its very difficult to retrace steps, and the argument changes to one akin to grappling with sand.

For anyone seriously addressing the question of our eternal status with God, however, it's essential to understand that this pallid concept of Jesus simply will not do. Our redemption, our reconciliation to God, our salvation will never be achieved by a belief in Jesus' teachings alone. A reliance on the resurrected Son of God, and a declaration, as the apostle Thomas, that Jesus in "my Lord and my God!" is required. As Lewis continued:

You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

The Cult of Self-Esteem

First, a short aside. For those of you who are kind enough to read this blog, let me apologize for being absent so long. My wife and I bought the old house belonging to my father-in-law and over these months we have been doing an extensive remodel, and finally have moved in. We've settled in to the point where I have time to once again make my written contributions. Thanks for your patience, and please pray with us that we will sell our old house. The market is very slow right now...

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. (2 Timothy 3:1-4 ESV)

I’m not sure when the “self-esteem” movement began.  I feel somewhat like the proverbial boiled frog when I look around at the ubiquity of the term these days (you know, put a frog in a pan of cold water and ever so slowly bring it to a boil so by the time he realizes he’s in trouble, he’s already cooked).  It seems that every personality, behavioral, and even financial malady these days is attributed to “low self-esteem”; but I confess to being truly astonished upon hearing that Crystal Cathedral pastor Robert Schuller wrote a book entitled: Self-Esteem: the New Reformation.  I have no desire to read the thing since the title alone is enough to make me queasy, but I can pretty much guess the sort of new-agy pseudo-aphorisms within.
 
Apparently there is a pop-Evangelical wrinkle of the self-esteem trend which goes something like this:  God has commanded us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves; therefore it’s necessary for us to cure ourselves from low self-esteem and learn to love ourselves so that we can love others.
 
The problem with this, of course, is that you’re not going to find anything even remotely similar to this in the Bible. Let's look again at this command to love our neighbor as ourselves. In reality it comes tied to another commandment which rightly precedes it:

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”(Matt. 22:35-40 ESV)

Jesus was here quoting two different places in the Torah, Deuteronomy 10:12, and Leviticus 19:18. So these are long-standing principles in which God expresses something irreducible in human nature--God didn't have to tell man to love himself. It was well-understood that man's self-love was so intrinsic, so self-evident, that God could use that fact as an essential clause in the second Great Commandment.

Yet now, thousands of years later, pop psychology (and for all I know, academic psychology) challenges this fact, and tells us that we need to "learn" to love ourselves, that indeed we need to nurture and cultivate our self-love, and only in this way can we be healthy and complete. I would like to dispute this whole notion of "low self-esteem" being the cause of so many of our modern ills with a radical submission: that all of the contemporary behavioral problems attributed to "low self-esteem", are rather due to an obsessive, all-encompassing surfeit of self-love. But what about depression? What about self-destructive behaviors, what about suicide?

Let me illustrate with myself. About four years ago I lost about 60 pounds. I was exercising daily, bought a new wardrobe, and felt great about myself. But little by little, I began to regain weight. Five pound here over a vacation, a couple more during the holidays, and during this remodel and move (eating fast food in the car as I drove to the new house after work to paint, and no time to exercise)...well, I've regained pretty much all I had lost, and I'm not very happy when I look in the mirror. Fair enough. Does this mean I don't love myself anymore? No, it means that when I see myself in the mirror, I am disappointed because what I see doesn't match the ideal picture I have of myself, the self-image of my conceit. If I didn't love myself, it wouldn't matter that the reality didn't match the concept.

Now as far as this goes, it's a fairly benign example, but the principle is the same for truly toxic or even self-destructive behaviors: they are born of disappointment, depression or rage at the short-comings of our reality compared to our narcissistic internal vision. Is it any wonder, then, that Paul warned Timothy of the self-lovers, "reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God," ?

So what is the cure? Jesus' two Great Commandments: more love of God, more love of others--and, if not less love of self, at least less self-absorbtion.

The Measure and the Reward

And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Luke 18:19 ESV

The statement above was not an admission of sin or unrighteousness on Jesus' part, but rather a declaration that our very sense of goodness--right and wrong, if you will--comes from God. It is the holiness of God--His absolute purity, transcendent of human capacity--that is the measuring stick for goodness.

This is where systems of morality unconnected to God inevitably fail, for they all use man as the measure and the reward for their function.

Try as you might to pick a living man or woman as your metric of morality, you are sure to be disappointed. At some point he or she will fall short of your "real" measurement which, perhaps against your best conscious efforts, resides within you somewhere beyond the reach of your reason and maybe even your consciousness; it is that inexplainable "ideal" man or woman which attests to the right or wrong of an action or attitude. The irony, of course, is that this ideal is not a man or woman at all--it is God.

In my years as a fabricator, and now as a draftsman, I've dealt with tolerances--the allowable deviation from the standard. But this very concept presupposes that standard of perfection. If the standard itself varies then even tolerances become meaningless. This is the fatal flaw in using man as the measure of morality.

Man as the reward fails as well. The appeal to behave a certain way for the good of society, or as a type of solidarity with your fellow man, or even to make your own life a little easier in avoiding conflict, always seems to smash against the wall of ego. We inevitably think something like, that's fine and well for my fellow man, but what about me?

Reinhold Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society wrote the following:

Pure religious idealism does not concern itself with the social problem. It does not give itself the illusion that material and mundane advantages can be gained by the refusal to assert your claims to them...Jesus did not counsel his disciples to forgive seventy times seven in order that they might convert their enemies, or make them more favorably disposed. He counseled it as an effort to approximate complete moral perfection, the perfection of God. He did not ask his followers to go the second mile in the hope that those who had impressed them into service would relent and give them freedom. He did not say that the enemy ought to be loved so that he would cease to be an enemy. He did not dwell upon the consequences of these moral actions, because he viewed them from an inner transcendent perspective.

Perhaps it was this inescapable sense that nothing in our physical reality quite "measures up" that led Plato to formulate his philosophy of the ideal, but that is the paradox of our existence; that we are perpetually disappointed yet inspired to better things. Our inability to realize Jesus' injunction, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect, (Matthew 5:48) is both the necessity for Jesus' redemption, and the promise that God's ultimate plan will, at last, make that perfection a reality.

It is God's perfect nature that is the measure of our morality. And it is our relationship with God that is, ultimately, our reward.

"If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." John 14:23 ESV

Dialogue with Dan, part 2

It's probably obvious to those of you have been reading this and my other blog (thank you), that I've taken a break. A little explanation: in mid May Nan and I went on vacation. The first half of the week was great, then I got sick. This turned into one of the most debilitating cases of the flue I've had in many years. I'm finally feeling better, both physically and emotionally, so I'm back at the computer keyboard.

Dan, my Buddhist friend, was kind enough to respond to my last exchange. The following is his reply.

Don,
No problem on the delay in answers. I myself was a little too busy for a while to give you a properly thought-out reply.



To start with a latter point, I want to assure you I am not angry at Christians (I read “My-Road-Back” several months ago). I feel occasional twinges of anger at the collective members of a certain religious group nowadays, but it’s not Christians. When I referred to irritating habits, I was thinking of certain childraising customs, but those are neither universal among nor exclusive to Christians. And on the topic of things that are neither universal among nor exclusive to Christians, you won’t hear me accuse Christians of hypocrisy. That is a tired cliché.



I always chafed at the concept of original sin, but not being a particularly deep thinker, was only able to put a finger on it thanks to Ayn Rand. Let me get back to your reply, in the order of your points.



You must have heard the expression before, “Read your Bible. It’ll scare the hell out of you!” The *constant* fearmongering, the stories of deathbed conversions, which admittedly may be overemphasized in the materials presented to children, the handwaving over the fate awaiting those who lived without ever having the chance to hear the Biblical message, and the injustice that I mentioned in my previous comment was what convinced me that there was something essential missing. The “handwaving” was basically, “We need to trust in the mercy and wisdom of God, who will judge those who never had the chance to hear the Christian message on the basis of what they could have known.” This loophole made sense to me, and still does. If I tried to apply it to myself and what I knew, though, the Sunday school teacher immediately went back to the fearmongering. “Well, *you*’ve heard of it, now, so you have no excuse!”



Moving on, your point about faith being in actions rather than feelings, is commonly made among my sect of Buddhists. (See www.sgi-usa.org if you are curious, especially www.sgi.org/buddhism/buddhism.html)



I guess I confused you with my “anthropormorphic characterization of the universe”. I was attempting to use Christian terminology for “how the universe works”. What I have always believed, with or without the existence of God, is that there is a law of justice. I see karma as the manifestation of that. Why is a conscious Being necessary for a moral law of justice to function, any more than it is for the law of gravity to function? All that said, I certainly never believed in a purely material universe.



As for the origin of the universe, the stock answer in my sect is, that is a question for science, not for religion. Go ahead and consider that “weaseling out”. It is not a question I worry about; I assume that the universe was always here. There may well have been a Big Bang 15 billion years ago; very well, what was the thing that “banged”, and why did it hold together until that precise moment? That’s the scientific version of “If God created the world, then who created God?” I look at those questions as scientists and theologians chasing their own tails. I’m interested in what faith can do for me here and now.



I do my prayers in the morning and evening because I’m a better person for it. I’m happier (-chuckle- though that can be hard to tell; I am generally morose at the moral and political degeneration of this society and expect very hard times for us in a few years), more considerate, more productive, and smarter. This practice is a tremendous blessing.



A comment on your final paragraph; the above is an answer to your final question. You asked where Gautama derived his sense of what was right. Let me go into a bit of theology. Our term for it is his “Buddha nature” or “the world of Buddhahood”. Tien Tai, the great scholar who wrote annotations of the Lotus Sutra, identified ten “worlds” that describe the basic life-conditions: Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Peace, Rapture, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva and Buddhahood. The lower six worlds are characterized by a dependence of the person’s life condition on the conditions in his environment, while the upper four worlds are more self-determined. To describe the less self-explanatory names, “Realization” means the life-condition of a creator and “Bodhisattva” means the life-condition of a person dedicated to action to save others. “Buddhahood” means the life-condition characterized by wisdom, compassion, dedication and action. All of us spend most of our lives in one of these worlds, our basic life-condition, but can manifest any of these worlds at any moment. Our sense of right and wrong is innate within us and derives from our Buddha nature.


Dan in Corbett

My reply:

Dan, thanks so much for taking the time to continue this dialogue, and, once again, my apologies for the delay in my response.

I read much of the material on the website you listed, but I have to say my reading left me with more questions than answers. Perhaps this is, more than anything else, an issue of epistemology (the theory of knowledge and what distinguishes justified belief from opinion), but over and over again I read statements there--presumably about the nature of reality from the Buddhist worldview--for which, not only no evidence was offered, but, even worse in my view, no underlying system of logic was presented. For instance, on the Buddhist Practice page it says, "Buddhism teaches that a universal Law (Dharma) underlies everything in the universe. This is the very essence of life." Uh, okay. Why?

Another example on the Karma page: "Karma can be thought of as our core personality, the profound tendencies that have been impressed into the deepest levels of our lives. The deepest cycles of cause and effect extend beyond the present existence; they shape the manner in which we start this life--our particular circumstances from the moment of birth--and will continue beyond our deaths. The purpose of Buddhist practice is to transform our basic life tendency in order to realize our total human potential in this lifetime and beyond." Now I presume this alludes to the karmic wheel of life, the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth (or reincarnation, in Western terms), in which, if not the personal identity or "memories" of past lives (as in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever--in other words no transmigration of "soul"), the karmic balance sheet of right and wrong deeds that make up a person's life experiences is "recycled" in a new human life. Again, no explanation or underlying system of logic is offered for how or why this is so, only the circumlocutory declaration that it is.

What I'm getting at here is that for every system of thought there are first principles, presumptions or "givens", from which the other precepts logically proceed. The Declaration of Independence is something of a logical argument based on the "self-evident truths" Thomas Jefferson named in the second paragraph. So, in the Christian system of thought, a first principle is that over and above the natural world is a "supernature," that underlying the physical world, is a "metaphysical;" and that this "supernature" over and above the natural--or material universe--is personal. This not only resonates with things we know and sense, about our own existence--i.e., that we are personal, that we have a spiritual dimension--but also underpins the logical conclusions and deductions of our worldview as a whole.

So when I read in the gospels Jesus' instruction in how to pray, and that my prayer is to a personal God whom I am to call my Father in heaven, this concept is connected in an unbroken thread of reasoning all the way back to those first principles that inform everything from my cosmology to my most basic perception of self--that I am me.

This is what leaves me so totally at loss when reading the articles on the Nichiren Buddhism website, as well as some of your own statements. If you've never believed in a purely material universe, then what is the nature of the non-material that you do believe in? Did it evolve as, presumably, you believe the material part of our universe did? If so, what were the forces or mechanisms that shaped its evolution? When you direct your chant of "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" to your Gohonzon to awaken innate capacities and "Buddha nature," how and why is that supposed to work?

Those are some of my questions. But one last statement before I finish. You posed the question of why a conscious Being is necessary for a moral law of justice to function, any more than it is for the law of gravity to function. In capitalizing Being, I presume you are alluding to the idea of a personal God as law-giver. My answer is that when we talk about the law of gravity, our use of the word "law" is a metaphor, a somewhat poetic way of describing how nature works; and that's what we're really talking about: how things really work. In other words, when we observe physical bodies moving through space-time, this is how they behave, and we call it "gravity."

But when we talk about a moral law of justice, we are talking about something that would not exist without consciousness or personality (in the sense of "personhood"), because we're no longer talking about how things really work, we're talking about how we sense they OUGHT to work. The tragic fact is that human existence is filled with examples of people committing the most hideous moral outrages and injustices for which they are never held accountable in this life. And if you doubt what I'm saying, then take humanity and sentient consciousness out of the equation--do you see anything like a moral law of justice at work in the animal kingdom?

You ended with the statement that our sense of right and wrong is innate, with which, with a few caveats, I agree (it also seems to be greatly malleable and subject to corruption), but this begs the question: "why?" Darwinist have twisted themselves into knots trying to justify morality as a product of evolution to frankly laughable results; a cursory examination of animal society and nature plainly demonstrate that our sense of justice, equality and morality are not a product of evolution, but rather an offense to it. We are clearly speaking of an idea. Ideas are products of minds. Minds are products of consciousness. Consciousness is a product of personality--self-aware, having identity, possessing the concept of "me" as separate from others. And that brings us back to that first principle--the personal "supernature"-- for no one has ever thought of a way of deriving personality from non-personal sources.

Euology for Gracie

I've been on vacation this last week. Nan and I just got back from the coast where yesterday, in something of a family reunion, we all boarded a boat at Depot Bay, motored out and around into Wale Cove, and spread the ashes of my wife's aunt Gracie into the ocean. We had a small memorial service there on the boat where family members shared thoughts and memories of Gracie, after which I delivered the following eulogy:


One of the many things that convinces me of the existence of God is the innate human need for meaning. If we were the product of a random universe and the accidental mixture of chemicals and electromagnetic discharge that Darwinism claims we are, there is and can never be any meaning to our lives. At times like these, when we celebrate the life of a loved one no longer present, our hunger for meaning is foremost in our minds: the meaning of our lives, the meaning of her life. When I think about Gracie, it seems that a lot of that meaning can be discerned from her name: Grace.

When Gracie's parents, Lester and Mildred, named her, perhaps they were thinking of nothing more than the clever inversion of Mildred's first two names, but reflecting on the course of her life and her beautiful personality, I can't help but think that in their action was an element of providence.

There's many definitions to the word, grace, but I think that two find particular expression in Gracie's life. The first is this: a disposition to be generous or helpful; goodwill. As we all know, Gracie had spent the better part of the last eight years of her life volunteering at the Pikes Peak Hospice, spending time and giving comfort to those facing their final painful days. What better testament could we find to Gracie's loving and giving nature?

But all of us who knew her had experienced it. Personal examples of her sweet and gentle character will endure with each of us. My own fondest memory is the last time I saw her, in her and Uncle John's home in Colorado Springs. She asked me to sing for her and tears welled in her eyes as I did. Then she showed me pictures of her daughter, played selections from Tatiana's CD, and spoke lovingly and with pride of her only child. A disposition to be generous or helpful; goodwill.

The second definition of grace I find fitting to Gracie's life is that of theology: the undeserved favor of God's redemption. At Uncle John's request we started this memorial with the Serenity Prayer, a prayer that had played a central and persistent role in Gracie's struggle with the darker chapters of her life. She wrote about this herself in a poem she called, "The Now." Let me read a few excerpts:

I struggled with life, and made it complex. I wandered in a fog, a chemical fog, where I kissed the door of death, and finally I had to die in order to find life. For years I ran from myself, never knowing the real me, yet always wanting to find myself. --and a little farther on in the poem-- Today I can accept those things I cannot change and strive to change the things I can. She finished the poem with this: I am living in the now-- Loving life on life's terms, one day at a time.

Gracie's life is an example to us all of God's grace; a life turned from the brink of death and the horrors of self-destruction, and transformed to the beauty that became the second half of her life. When she surrendered herself to God's mercy, relying, as all who follow the twelve steps do, on his "higher power," she experienced not only the blessing of her own life, but in turn blessed all of us who came to know and love her.

As much as we yearn for meaning, we also yearn for transformation, to be changed from our propensity for selfishness, and self-destruction. That which is commonly called our conscience is a universal human code that describes, not what we are, but what we know we ought to be--not our actual behavior, but what we inherently sense our behavior should be. The tragedy is we are helpless to effect that change on our own; we are trapped in a perpetual loop that the Apostle Paul described this way to the Christians in Rome:

After all, the Law itself is really concerned with the spiritual - it is I who am carnal, and have sold my soul to sin. In practice, what happens? My own behaviour baffles me. For I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe.
When I come up against the Law I want to do good, but in practice I do evil. My conscious mind whole-heartedly endorses the Law, yet I observe an entirely different principle at work in my nature. This is in continual conflict with my conscious attitude, and makes me an unwilling prisoner to the law of sin and death. In my mind I am God's willing servant, but in my own nature I am bound fast, as I say, to the law of sin and death. It is an agonising situation, and who on earth can set me free from the clutches of my sinful nature? I thank God there is a way out through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It reminds me of a line in the film, As Good As It Gets, when Jack Nicholson's character tells Helen Hunt's character, "You make me want to be a better man." We all want to be better men and women, don't we? But we can't, not on our own. And even if we could, what about all the bad things we've done in the past? There's still a price to be paid, they don't just "go away" on their own. And that's where the grace of God comes in. Jesus paid that price, took our punishment upon himself, and, when we surrender to that grace, he begins the transformation of our lives we so long for.

Gracie experienced that transformation. Her life was a living expression of it. It was a process that began when she finally submitted herself to her "higher power," Jesus Christ. As Paul said to Christians in Corinth,

And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.

As we remember and celebrate Gracie's life and the blessing and joy she brought to all of us, I hope you'll join me in rejoicing that the transformation that started with her surrender to God's grace, is now complete; for we have this promise from the apostles. First from Paul's letter to the Christians at Philippi:

Jesus Christ will re-make these wretched bodies of ours to resemble his own glorious body, by that power of his which makes him the master of everything that is.

And then from the apostle John:

Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.

An Answer to Dan

A couple of Sundays ago a friend of mine posted a comment on my "Terror in the Night" post on this blog. I was very gratified that he took the time to post, and so I'm reprinting his comment, and my reply, in the hope that we can have further dialogue.

First, a short introduction of Dan. He's a great and interesting guy I met through a discussion group I used to moderate for readers of Townhall.com, the premier website of conservative political commentary. Dan makes his living translating between Japanese and English. The following are his comments:

For what it's worth coming from someone who fled Christianity when he was 18, I had the same night terrors for years as a child. I had been taught that one who died in a state of rejection of God would go to Hell, whereas one who died in a state of acceptance, Grace, to use your term, would go the other way ... **regardless of how they had actually lived their life**. Recall the constant refrain of "Good works do not get you into heaven."


I knew that (1) I was nowhere near as destructive and hateful as some other kids and adults in my environment, but (2) I found it impossible to sustain any faith in the Christian God for more than a few minutes at a time. The possibility of dying in a state of rejection of God was very real to me. This actually fueled a certain level of nihilism in me, because of the apparent capriciousness of God. After some years of my practice of Buddhism, I have lost nearly all my anger toward Christianity (this is not the time to discuss what I see as irritating habits of Christians). My view of how the universe works ("God", if you prefer) is that He/She is not really the cruel, capricious bastard I had "believed" in.


So what's the point of bringing this to the attention of Don and his Christian readers? I'd like to recommend that you address with your children the question that kept me up at nights. You may save them a lot of unnecessary misery. Whether or not it is true that "good works do not get you into Heaven", it is certainly true that good works tend to be the mark of a good character, and that will not be overlooked by any Force for justice.

My reply:

Dan,
First let me apologize for not getting back to you sooner.

I want to thank you for reading my blog, and especially for taking the time to comment on it. I always welcome comments, even if (or perhaps, especially if) they are in disagreement.

Reading your comments I can't help wondering what concept of God you were presented as a child to convince you that he was cruel and capricious. If it was the picture conceived and codified by John Calvin--the God who arbitrarily decreed before the advent of creation the select cadre of those whom he would irresistibly transform their will and thereby allow them to believe and be saved, but doom the rest to damnation--well, I can't believe in the fundamental goodness of that God either. I do believe that to give our existence and our relationship with God any meaning whatsoever, it was essential for man to be given absolute free will, and that an inevitable result of that free will is that many people choose to worship themselves rather than God.

My second question is regarding the concept of faith you were taught. Your comment that you were unable to sustain any faith in the Christian God for more than a few minutes at a time, causes me to suspect that you saw faith as a type of emotion or feeling, defined, perhaps, as the absence of doubt. But I think faith, just as courage, is rightly defined as action rather than feeling, a reliance, in the same way that I rely on a chair to hold my weight when I sit on it. My faith doesn't mean that I no longer have doubts, nor that I don't struggle at times with certain philosophical issues, but it does mean that, in conjunction with the extraordinary evidence for the resurrection of Christ and Biblical messianic prophesy, I see the Christian worldview as the most reasonable and logical system of thought that speaks to every facet of human reality, and also resonates with the deepest cravings of my inner life--my conscience, my longing for justice, my insatiable appetite for beauty and superlatives of all kinds.

Let me confess that I find your anthropomorphic characterization of the universe logically inconsistent with the "pure" Buddhist view that there is no god. From my, admittedly, meager reading about Buddhism, I understand that Siddhartha Gautama dealt with the question of the origin of the universe primarily by avoiding the question altogether. This seems completely inadequate to modern man. Whatever one can say about the various controversies regarding cosmology and the Christian doctrine of creation, at least we don't ignore it.

If I read you correctly, your anger at Christians--which presumably grew to encompass Christianity itself--was due to the injustice of Christians believing they could go to heaven regardless of what kind of life they lived: the doctrine of salvation by faith, not of works. First, don't feel alone in your anger at Christians. If you read my blog My-Road-Back, which is my story of return to practicing Christianity because of the events of 9/11, you'll see it was similar anger that drove me away from the church for so many years. But let me point out that the tension between the concept of God's redemptive grace and man's need to obey God's law has been present in Christianity since apostolic times. The apostles Paul and John had to deal with a heresy we have since called antinomianism whose adherents thought they should sin even more so God's grace would increase:

Shall we sin to our heart's content and see how far we can exploit the grace of God? What a ghastly thought! We, who have died to sin--how could we live in sin a moment longer? (Romans 6:1 Phillips translation)

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only ours but also for the sins of the whole world. We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. (I John 2:1-6 NIV)

What seems to me particularly ironic is that your disgust at the behavior of Christians was based on Christian morality: you were evaluating the justice of Christianity by the yardstick of Christian moral truth inculcated in you through your Christian upbringing and American culture steeped in Judeo/Christian values.

This brings me back to the question of cosmology. If we exist in a purely material universe, which is ontologically essential in the absence of a personal, creator God, then morality is not--and cannot be--anything more than an evolutionary construct derived from primate behavior that necessitated close-nit social bonds for survival; there can be no such thing as moral absolutes. Morality becomes a thing of personal whim, and any particular variant of morality only has authority to whatever degree of political or social power its adherents can acquire. No one can, in any objective sense, say that one variant of morality is "better" than any other except with regard to its success as a survival strategy. From this standpoint we cannot honestly say that Pol Pot's moral vision, which necessitated the butchery of 20% of the population of Cambodia in one year for the objective of creating a truly equal and classless society, was "bad"--just unsuccessful.

This leaves me asking: when Gautama created his eight steps in the path of enlightenment--right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right mode of livelihood, right effort, right awareness, right concentration--from whom, or what, did he derive his concepts of the right? And why should I give his concept any more weight or authority than Pol Pot's, or Confucius', or Mohammed's, or Jesus', or the Marquis de Sade's, or better yet, whatever I happen to decide on any given day, depending on the state of my digestion, or the difficult financial crunch in which I may find myself?

Don

A Modern Parable

Once there was a man-we'll call him John--born in the country of Amerigo. Despite the fact that Amerigo was a wonderful country that had educated him, provided a police force and a fire department that protected his property, and a utility grid from which he purchased his power, sewer and water, John decided that he no longer wanted to be a citizen of his country of birth.

John decided to secede from Amerigo. He built a large fence around his property and dubbed his domain Johnistan. Then he notified the government that he renounced his citizenship, and declared his property a sovereign country in its own right.

John did business with his neighbors, used the currency of Amerigo, and proceeded with his life with the added benefit that he no longer paid taxes.

John grew old and contented, and eventually decided to retire. He went to the office of Amerigo's sate pension, and applied for his pension payments, upon which he was notified by the pension case worker that he was not eligible to receive a pension.

"But I've worked hard all my life!" John protested. "I've never broken any Amerigo laws, and citizens of Amerigo have benefitted from my labor."

"That may be true," said the case worker, "but you're not a citizen yourself. You seceded, remember? You renounced your allegiance to Amerigo many years ago, and quit paying taxes. The fact that you obeyed our laws and contributed to the larger economy in other ways simply has no bearing."

John went home in a rage, only to find that his house was on fire. He quickly called the fire department, but upon giving them his address, was told they could not fight fires outside of the borders of Amerigo: John's house resided in the country of Johnistan. John had to watch his house burn, and over the next few days, surrounded by its ruins, he found his neighbors picking through the rubble for valuables that had survived the fire. He tried to chase them off, but because of his age and weakness, they ignored him. When he appealed to police for help, they too informed him that they had no jurisdiction in the country of Johnistan.

* * * * *

A common misunderstanding of sin is that its just breaking rules and that there will be a sort of cosmic ledger that God will consult at our eternal judgement; that if we have done more good things than bad things, we will be allowed into heaven. It's a comforting thought to those who have never done anything really bad, you know, like murder, or rape, or robbing a bank.

But the problem is, this idea is just plain wrong. Rule breaking is merely a symptom of the real problem, which is our state of rebellion against God. Sin is a state of being, a condition, in which we have seceded from his sovereignty and renounced our allegiance. Appeals to God to be given entrance to eternal life in his presence because we are "good," will make about as much sense as our protagonist, John, trying to collect his social security benefits from the country from which he had seceded.

If one spends his whole life ignoring his creator, and especially the sacrifice that Jesus made to repair that breech and reconcile us to God, his reliance on his own "goodness" will get him about as far as John's pleas to the fire department and police force of fictional Amerigo.

As C.S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: "What are you asking God to do?" To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him. (John 3:36 NIV)

Terror in the Night

I had a dream that made me afraid. As I was lying in my bed, the images and visions that passed through my mind terrified me. (Daniel 4:5 NIV)

Recently I attended a men's retreat and, during one of the discussion groups, the following question was on a list for comment topics: "when was the time in your life when you felt farthest from God?" I had nothing to say at the time, but later the question came to mind as I wrestled with sleeplessness late that night.

Periodic insomnia is a curse I inherited from my father, though thankfully not to the degree he suffered from it. All through the decade of my 40's, long estranged from God and fellow believers, and deeply ambivalent as to the truth of Christianity, I would lie awake during my occasional bouts at the darkest and loneliest time of night--2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. At all other times of the day and night I was successful in pushing away the question of my eternity, but not then. A sense of dread and even terror would descend on me as I examined myself. I could feel my life slipping away from me, as if through my fingers. My thoughts would range far and wide, sometimes never coalescing into anything other than my sense of dread, but often they centered around my abandonment of God and the question of faith. If God didn't exist, my life was meaningless, hopeless, and inexorably leeching away. If God did exist, I was wasting my only opportunity to secure my relationship with him.

Despite the horror of those experiences, I never once awakened my wife in bed next to me, but lay there alone in my dread, heart pounding, sometimes sweating, sometimes chilled to the bone. It was then that I felt farthest from God, utterly cut off from his presence. Eventually I would fall asleep, and when I would awake the next morning, the terror of the night before would be pushed aside as I got on with the day.

On this sleepless night at the retreat, however, it occurred to me that ever since I had reconciled with God, I no longer experienced these night terrors. Sleeplessness had become an opportunity for prayer; self-examination an occasion for resolve and hope. Because I am confident in God's existence, his forgiveness, and his presence, I'm no longer tortured by the anxieties that once plagued me.

To Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the other new breed of activists atheists, this phenomenon is a sign of the mental weakness of Christians, religion as a psychological "crutch", or surrogate father figure as Sigmund Freud asserted in his writings. The folly of this theory is clear when one asks how the three Christian men who were horribly tortured for three hours before having their throats slit by Islamic fanatics in Malatya, Turkey last week were made more psychologically "comfortable" by their Christian faith. Here is a link to the story, but be warned: the appalling medieval atrocities committed on their bodies is sickening. Even discounting the kind of persecution endured by Christians in other countries, there is the social exclusion and contempt from non-believing friends, and even family, that Jesus warned would be the cost of discipleship.

If the world hates you, you know that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own. But because you do not belong to the world and I have chosen you out of it, the world will hate you. Do you remember what I said to you, 'The servant is not greater than his master'? If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you as well... (John15:18-20 Phillips translation)

The point is that as Christians we have hope: the assurance of God's forgiveness and an eternal existence with him. We also have the promise of peace of mind, whether in the midst of horrible persecution such as those even now experienced by so many believers in other countries, or the everyday doubts, or snubs, or social insults we may face in the relative safety of the United States.

No temptation has come your way that is too hard for flesh and blood to bear. But God can be trusted not to allow you to suffer any temptation beyond your powers of endurance. He will see to it that every temptation has a way out, so that it will never be impossible for you to bear it. (I Corinthians 10:13 Phillips translation)

We even have peace of mind during those sleepness nights when the inevitable questions arise about the direction of our lives, career, finances and accomplishments.

Don't worry over anything whatever; tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer, and the peace of God which transcends human understanding, will keep constant guard over your hearts and minds as they rest in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6,7 Phillips translation)