I understand that this is a little belated, but I didn’t want you to think I had forgotten all about you.
So the update is as follows: Edict of Nantes is on vacation.
If you know me at all, you know I’m not on some white sand beach when I say “vacation,” but rather consumed with another endeavor.
This time, it’s called National Novel Writing Month. It’s actually my third novel, but it’s doing a number on me and my free time. You can check my progress here.
I’ll see you in December.
In rummaging through this site, the United Methodist Church’s one-stop theology clearinghouse, I came across this gem, which has been echoed in many media throughout the week.
On the Duty of Christians to Civil Authority:
It is the duty of all Christians, and especially of all Christian ministers, to observe and obey the laws and commands of the governing or supreme authority of the country of which they are citizens or subjects or in which they reside, and to use all laudable means to encourage and enjoin obedience to the powers that be.
This was excerpted from the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church.
With direct faith in divine providence, it would be impossible to believe that it was not God’s will, should John McCain be elected.
That said, I feel that I am well within my right to be disappointed, should this be the case. Yet, it would be my duty firstly as a Christian and secondly as a citizen to obey the elected officials.
Need still more proof? I kind of did. I had read this not too long ago in Romans 13:1.
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
That’s a zinger. I’m not going to lie. I had actually written “in a theocracy?” in the margin. I didn’t want to believe that God wanted me to trust in the will of W. And yet, as a Christian, I have to believe that God wanted to show us something in electing him twice. In. A. Row.
And yet I struggle with this. What about those that subvert the authority? What about the world-changing civil disobedience that we’ve experienced in this world? Truly, these people found the governing bodies unjust and found it necessary to fight against them. Could we say that Reverend King was sinning against his better judgment as a Baptist in questioning the nature of segregation in the South, which was nothing if not established by elected officials?
I can’t decide. But I feel that I’m forced to believe that we should obey “civil authority” only to the extent that it does not conflict with our innate knowledge of justice. As Christians, indeed, as human beings, we cannot let unjust laws or regulations go unchallenged. So where is the equilibrium?
How do you approach this theologically, philosophically, and practically?
I’ve spent a lot, shall we say an inordinate amount, of time lately on Facebook. The purpose of this gratuitous of the interweb is not for looking at friends’ photos from exotic locales, catching up on their miniblogging via their status updates, or sending someone good karma with some asinine application or other. And least of all is this time spent with so-called social networking in the traditional sense.
No, the purpose of my mindless whittling away of time is for none of these reasons. The real reason is doubtlessly worse, if only in its compulsion. That’s right. I’ve spent all this time lately tracking people down from prior to middle school. On the surface, it seemed benign: an attempt to reconnect with these formative characters of my past life. But the more I found, the more I sought.
One particular find that clued me in to the neuroses reflected in this endeavor was an old flame who was, all things considered, rather recent. A certain operatic soprano from Boston Conservatory received a nice little friend request early last week. And what was the purpose of this particular find? To rekindle said old flame? Just to see how she was doing, even? Hardly. Rather, and exclusively, to atone for some long lost hurt I caused.
You see, at one point, long after we dated, at a time that I can only estimate to be around six years ago, the aforementioned donna of the prima variety sent me an email expressing that, though she was uncertain, it seemed as though she had fallen in love with me. (For clarification, it was a brief fling toward the end of my freshman year, and we were far from in love at the time.)
My reaction? Indignation. That’s right. Good, old fashioned anger. I’ll attempt to recreate my reasoning here, though I’m certain that I’ll only be able to do so well with such an irrational reaction. At the time, I think I was in a certain isolationist phase that made me feel good that no one understood me. I found solace in records only 200 or so people had heard, I spoke as often as possible in a language (literally) only two or three of my friends could understand, and I tried to read books that would make me the kind of bohemian that I would today only consider adolescent. My anger came that, a year after we dated, she had no idea who I was, and had made no attempt at furthering her knowledge of this. So how could she be in love with me? She wasn’t in love with who I practically was, but rather an idea. (The reasoning actually seems almost sound enough in recounting it that I can almost see where I was coming from.)
Needless to say, we stopped talking.
Fastforward to the other day, when she accepted my friend request and the accompanying note by saying that it was all “fond water under the bridge.” That we were “young” and that “young people do stupid things to themselves and to each other” and that, ostensibly, we did not diverge from this path.
That’s all well and good, but it was, of course, not as cathartic as I think I had wished.
And ultimately, it never is.
About a year ago, I had the opportunity to apologize to my sister Kate for telling her that she ruined my tenth birthday when she accidentally shut my finger in a door hinge. She laughed and told me she didn’t even remember and that I could probably let go of it. This was helpful, as I had been carrying it around a good long time. (Not necessarily since the age of ten, but as soon as I realized my error, which was not much later. Either way, we’re over a decade here.)
So here’s the compulsion: as great as I am at forgiving other people and at accepting veritable forgiveness when it is given, I am all but unable to forgive myself.
My question is: why?
This conundrum conveniently coincides with the “Forgiveness” chapter in Mere Christianity. I consulted Lewis, and, unfortunately, he didn’t address the issue as directly as I would’ve liked. He invokes the idea of asking God to “forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.” This is close to touching on the issue. That is to say, it is necessary to forgive others in order to receive this forgiveness. Indeed, “there is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.”
But what I wanted to know was, if I can forgive and be forgiven by others, why then could I not forgive myself?
This forced me to face the very difficult idea of the fact that I may not have fully accepted Jesus’ atonement for my sins. It’s stunningly troublesome to wrestle with this conclusion, particularly because it makes me feel like an insufficient Christian. (There I go again with the self-flagellation.)
Let me make my stance perfectly clear. It took me a relatively long time to get here, but: I believe in and love God, whom I completely believe is omniscient, omnipotent, and ever-loving. Additionally, I believe that he came down to Earth, incarnate in Christ, with the intention of restoring our covenant with Him. I believe that Jesus died a death He freely accepted (though not without strife and fear), in order to save us from our sins. And I believe that He rose on the third day after His death and ascended into Heaven, where He completed the Trinity, the three-personed and personal God.
And truthfully, I feel this as emotionally as I do intellectually. But, though I view my time away from the Church as a necessary part of my overall spiritual séjour, I don’t ever really feel that I fully left God, even when I tried to intellectually convince myself of an atheist conclusion.
But even accepting God didn’t make it easy to believe that the fact that a first century Jewish carpenter was nailed to two perpendicular pieces of wood not nullified, but atoned the original Fall of Man. After reviewing all of the intellectual and emotional evidence, this is a conclusion I accept, and find incredibly necessary both to my humanity and to my soul.
But to distill it to its essence, would I not be more capable of forgiving myself if, I accepted this death for my sins? Ultimately, I accept it factually, but is it possible that I don’t feel fully atoned for? I do feel that I continue to sin (as is human), and that His death continually affords me grace from these sins, pending, of course, my repentance.
But is it possible that I accept this, but can’t accept the accompanying pardon? Indeed, if I could, could I not also relatively easily see that, by proxy, Jesus had already and in advance afforded me pardon for whatever I did, provided I felt truly sorry and expressed this to God?
So if I spend a significant part of my prayer life acknowledging my sins and the accompanying forgiveness, why is it so difficult for me to veritably accept this forgiveness? If we define forgiveness, as it was aptly suggested by Michaela (and confirmed by the Random House Unabridged Dictionary [I know, I know, this is abominable for a linguist, but upon disenrollment from Metro, I lost my access to the OED online!]) as “to cancel an indebtedness or liability,” then I can only forgive myself if I genuinely feel that no debt is outstanding. Indeed, God makes it clear to us that Jesus canceled this debt.
It stands to reason, then, that my next theological hurdle is to sit with this forgiveness and continue to practice it not only outwardly, but also inwardly.
###
Have you struggled with this in the past? Are you struggling with it now? Have you dealt with it? Please illuminate me and fellow readers in the comments.
What follows is my argument for the existence of God.
***
I shall begin by creating a metaphysics and from that arguing for the
existence of the soul, from which I will conclude that a God must exist.
[My first caveats are that I know that I can’t prove a God exists (thank
you, Kant), and that I know that applying a rational line of thought to
something that should, in reality, be based more on intuition (or not?) is
dangerous, but this is what I’m finding in my own study.
Additionally, be sensitive in your critique of the argument, that it comes from someone who took nothing more than philosophy 101, and is certain there are holes in it. I would greatly appreciate you revealing the holes to me, so that I can more objectively consider the strength of the argument.
(My reading list contains the following, which you may or may not see extant in my reasoning: Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion,” John F. Haught’s “God and the New Atheism,” C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity,” The New International Version of the Bible, C.S. Lewis’ “The Abolition of Man,” Kai Nielsen’s “Atheism and Philosophy,” and assorted others.)]
Consider our relationship to music. As musicians, I believe that both you
and I appreciate music on a wholistic level. I feel that there are aspects
of many types of music that satisfy me. I propose that the ways in which
they satiate me can not be wholly explained by scientific means. That is to
say, it is clear to me based on my subjective experience when listening to
music that the feeling I get cannot be explained by simply attributing it to
the dulcet vibration of polyphonics that causes my ear drums to vibrate
sympathetically and translate across synapses to something that my brain
understands as pleasing. Certainly in the case of something like Radiohead’s
Kid A, there is an intuitive understanding I have of the music that I feel
transcends what can be explained by biology. By transcends, I understand
that it functions beyond, and indeed independent of, the biological
conclusions that science draws. Thus, I feel that I can only conclude that
what I appreciate about Radiohead is beyond a physical understanding.
If we can agree on this, then let us also take the example of visual
aesthetics as manifest in visual art. If you would indulge me, let us
consider the art of Pablo Picasso. It is clear that a majority of
Picasso’s art exists outside of the realm of pure representation. By this I
mean that his paintings are not executed in a photo-realist manner, but
rather he uses elements of the abstract to convey at times very concrete
realities, for example a human portrait. If we take the example of “Three Musicians,” since we have just used music to illustrate a point (the image can be viewed here to jog your memory: http://www.ratchetup.com/roadtrip/images/picasso_2.jpg), it is clear that, though three figures are depicted in the painting, there are many abstract elements that are not necessarily consonant with our perception of other human beings. But what I wish to discuss about this painting is what exists in it that, like the previous example, cannot be explained away by biology. That is to say, the colors and the orientation of the figures, as well as the idea that Picasso clearly had developed or was developing a new way of seeing is, to my subjective experience, stunning. I come away from viewing this image with a feeling that cannot be explained by light reflecting off of the canvas, meeting the lens of my eye, being projected onto the back of my eye and righted by my brain, where it is interpreted as a visual image. This has no bearing on how the piece affects me emotionally.
Consider lastly, if you will, the concept of romantic love. This is something that I feel science does a pitifully poor job of explaining. When I am in love with someone, it is clear to me that, though the biological aspects of attraction certainly play a part, the overwhelming desire is above biology. This is best shown by example. I, in particular, am attracted to certain things that are not necessarily biologically adaptive. For example, I dig a girl in glasses. If anything, this is a trait that, by the biological explanation, should be unattractive. After all, if my goal is to produce the most healthy offspring possible, I would have naturally to prefer a woman without glasses; I would not want her problems with eyesight to be inherited by my progeny. However, it is something that I find inexplicably attractive. I feel that critics of this line of reasoning would provide another possible explanation. It could be that I psychologically associate having glasses with being intelligent. And this is something that I would consider beneficial to pass on to my offspring. While this is true, it doesn’t take into account that the intelligence associate with bespectacled women is not viewed in terms of survival instincts, but rather what is commonly called “book smarts.” Indeed, some of the more book smart people I know have filled their heads with theory and idea to such an extent that survival instincts are severely jeopardized. In this case, I am only to conclude that my attraction to intelligence of the bookish ilk is based on what I feel I would have in common with such a woman. An amalgamation of these common interests is what, to me, among other things, would make a happy and sustainable relationship. This is what I know to be the apex of my craving in the realms of human interaction. Yet biology would assert that we are innately polygamous creatures. That, like in nature, we are not meant to spend the majority of our lives with one partner. Why, then, would we seek to have a relationship that would fulfill us emotionally, rather than basing our choice of partners solely on the traits they would pass on to our young and the skill with which they would raise them? Because what is important is what I will henceforth refer to as emotional attraction. This attraction is what I will define as the attraction I have to someone that is not caused by hormones, or my biological perception that they would make a good mother, but rather my desire to have a lasting, fulfilling relationship with the person. This cannot be explained by biology, and I can only attribute it to something transcendent. Something far beyond our physical selves.
I would argue, then, that the metaphysical framework of my argument has been outlined. I have argued that physical science, as we know and understand it, can but abysmally poorly explain the true nature of the phenomena I have experienced as I stated it.
I would venture to state, by way of addendum, that not even emotions can describe the phenomena I have just outlined. My reasoning for this is that emotions seem nothing if not realized as a part of a posteriori knowledge. Indeed, one must reflect on external stimuli before they are able to come to an understanding of their emotional stance on an issue. Yet the extent to which these phenomena resonate with me, particularly in the case of music or someone with whom I am inexplicably in love, must necessarily be a priori because no reflection is required for me to recognize a soul-resonance.
The aforementioned realm beyond our physical selves is what I choose to refer to, then, as the soul. If we can agree, based on the content of my argument thus far, that souls exist, then the logical leap toward God is reduced from s an irreconcilable chasm to little more than a puddle after a midday drizzle.
Our experience of external stimuli, because our selves and our brains are unique, is both subjective and unique to each of us. In this case, it would not make sense for our souls to be part of a collectivity. Our souls must necessarily be as unique as our our bodies, our brains, indeed our fingerprints. And if there exists a realm of individual souls, or any soul at all, and that realm exists beyond, or transcendent of, our physical world, than, unlike our world, it is immaterial. And how else would this immaterial substance be created than by a God? If science fails even to explain the full extent of my attraction to another human being, how could it assert a theory on the creation of immaterial substance? (Clearly, it would eschew such a pursuit, but not only because it is ostensibly discordant with the goals of scientific thought.) Otherwise stated, God must have created the substance of our immaterial souls. Only an immaterial and omnipotent being could have created such immaterial substances, and, further, caused them to respond to these stimuli in the aforementioned ways, among others.
I must thus conclude that an omnipotent being created my soul and instilled it with the qualities that make me respond to music, to art, indeed to love, in the way that it does.
###
Please respond in the comments. This is something that I’ve run by my favorite thinkers, and I’ve gotten a lot of great critical responses.
The most important thing to note is that the person I was trying to convince with this is not you, it is me. I wanted to know that if I came to this conclusion, it was–and is–genuine. And without at least laying out something along these lines, a clear and (more or less) coherent line of reasoning as to why I’ve been feeling the way I do lately, I would feel very uncomfortable.
What are your thoughts?
Posted in Uncategorized
My reading list
This has been in the making for a long time.
Recently, I’ve been reconsidering the God question in my life. A few close friends, beginning with one over a year and a half ago, made me realize that it’s a question I can practically ignore no longer.
And more than a few conversations of late have caused me to realize that the feelings I’ve harbored since my break with the church at the age of 12 have been more about the religious environment I see around me than my actual relationship with God.
So I’ve uncovered a few books that can help guide me in this path: literature of both theistic and atheistic natures. Here are the titles:
*The Bible (New International Version)
*There is a God, by Anthony Flew
*God and the New Atheism, by John F. Haught
*The Miracle of Theism, by J.L. Mackie
*The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
*Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
*Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, by Elaine Pagels
*Atheism & Philosophy, by Kai Nielsen
*The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis
*Confessions, by Saint Augustine
*Warranted Christian Belief, by Alvin Plantiga
Yes, a quick overview will reveal that there is more theistic literature in the stack than atheistic, but, truth be told, I have not run into nearly enough cogent atheistic literature. More on this later.
For now, I’ve decided to set up this blog as a forum to chronicle my experience in searching for truth and beauty in my own life. Feel free to join me on this journey.
L'infiniment grand et l'infiniment petit 
