We seem destined to be tormented by cravings that we cannot satisfy or to live dissatisfied lives dead to our deepest longings.
We tend to think of childhood as that period in our lives when we are preparing for life. But the truth of the matter is that life for the most part comes right at us from the very beginning. No warm-ups; no pre-game; no do-overs or mulligans. It's the real thing from our first breaths.
Sadly, I don't really remember much from my birthday ... the best I can do is pick up the trail of memories beginning several years afterward. It is humbling to realize that my earliest memories are not really independent thoughts but more what I've been told about the first few years of my life with memories filled in from pictures, stories in my baby book or home videos. All of us are shaped by people and events that we may not even vaguely remember. I have just a handful of memories of my biological mother who committed suicide just before my tenth birthday. Yet whether I care to admit it or not, she still affects me decades later. So I know that my earliest thoughts were not shaped in a vacuum, but I also know that they did not simply come from the outside.
When I was only a small child, I believed in God, in love, and in laughter. To believe in these things is natural to the human spirit. For a child, more is unknown than is known. To believe in God, in mystery, in the unseen, is not difficult for a child. Children are pretty much born to believe. They are the perfect candidates for myths, fables and fairy tales. Adults, on the other hand, see this as a weakness, as proof of the naivete of childhood.
As we grow older, we come to know better. I find it odd how as adults, we struggle with faith. We need evidence to justify our belief in the invisible. We attempt to build faith systems constructed with our logic and reason. As children, we just believed. Faith was so natural. Yes, our innocence left us vulnerable to believing things that were not true, but is it also possible that this same innocence exists so that we may find that which is most true? We seem to be created with an inherent inclination to believe. So perhaps the truth is that we don't grow into faith; we grow out of it.
We have within us both the ability and the disposition to look beyond the material world and to search for the eternal. If God exists and we were created to know him and faith is the means by which that happens, doesn't it make sense that we would be born with such an inclination? For others, to believe in God is far too great a stretch. They even consider such to be an insult to their intelligence. For them believing in something they cannot empirically see or test is absurd. And if we were to speak of the effects of God on the lives of his people, they will insist that secondary evidence is not enough. If it is not primary then it is unreal.
Then there is love.
... To be continued ...
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
To Be or Not To Be ... a Model T
All of us begin our lives fueled by curiosity, yet far too many of us replace it with conformity. We are born unique but often die standardized. Henry Ford offered his Model T in any color his customers wanted ... so long as it was black. He was the master of standardization. This turned out not to be a sustainable idea for cars, much less for people. We are not supposed to look like or act like and certainly not live like we are the products of an assembly line.
It is far too easy to live our lives by default. And if we are not careful, we can easily become the sum total of all the expectations others impose on our lives. Too often we allow ourselves to become generic, standardized, homogenized. We too frequently just maintain the status quo ... conform to the expectation of others ... suppress our curiosity ... stop questioning ... refrain from stirring things up. We line up and march in single file. We just get in line all to often never even thinking to ask WHY WE ARE EVEN STANDING THERE AT ALL.
I think this begins way back in kindergarten. Janna and I spent a week in my daughter's [Alli] kindergarten class in Caracas, VZ this past March. One of the striking thing the kids learn and do in kindergarten is to line up for everything ... even to go to the bathroom. They line up for recess, for lunch, for snack, to change classes, literally everything. The highest honor a kid gets in kindergarten is the rotating task of being the "line leader" for the day. Heck it is even a fun task to be the "line caboose" for the day. And it is the line leader's and line caboose's job to keep all the other kids "in line." Somehow this becomes a pattern for our lives even to the subconscious level.
I sometimes notice this phenomenon at the movie theater when there is an extraordinarily long line for the sole ticket window even in the rain and then there is another window open and no one there in line. I will ask the worker manning the booth if he is open and he will say "yes" and then I will ask why no one is in his line and he will often answer with a sheepish look on his face that he "has no idea." After I have safely secured my tickets I have tried to free those in the long line to come on over and come out of the rain and receive the most distrusting looks from so many reluctant to believe. Why is it that we are more likely to get in line behind someone else than we are to start our own? Can it really go back to our kindergarten days and then just be socially reinforced through the decades that follow?
Eventually we find ourselves a part of a human assembly line surrounded by standardization, routine and predictability. We find ourselves miserable in the mundane. One day we end up finding ourselves looking at our image in the mirror and wondering who we are and why we are. Is life arbitrary? Or is there meaning behind it? Are we unique or are we incidental? Screen writer and actor Zach Braff captures this struggle to find uniqueness while wallowing in the blandness of everyday existence masterfully in the movie, Garden State.
This film follows the lives of a group of people who seem to be going absolutely nowhere and then the death of Andrew Largeman's [Braff] mother and the intervention of one person [Sam, Natalie Portman] who refuses to give up on her own uniqueness awakens him out of his lithium-induced slumber. The story reminds us that it is easy to become an echo instead of a voice. Yet we discover even one meaningless act that stands alone as unique can give us hope that our lives can, in fact, be different. It is ironic that we can be absolutely uncertain about what it is that we are looking for and yet be absolutely certain that we haven't found it. Still we know that we are searching for something; we just don't know for what or even why.
From our first breaths we have been on a journey. There are things our souls long for, and whether we have yet recognized it or not, our lives are shaped by our search for them. We are on a quest to discover our own uniqueness ... who we are, why we are here, and where we are going.
If we find ourselves endlessly thwarted in our search for our uniqueness, we may choose to end our quests and settle for sterile lives of empty existence. We must be careful not to mistake our surrender for rest.
... To be continued ...
It is far too easy to live our lives by default. And if we are not careful, we can easily become the sum total of all the expectations others impose on our lives. Too often we allow ourselves to become generic, standardized, homogenized. We too frequently just maintain the status quo ... conform to the expectation of others ... suppress our curiosity ... stop questioning ... refrain from stirring things up. We line up and march in single file. We just get in line all to often never even thinking to ask WHY WE ARE EVEN STANDING THERE AT ALL.
I think this begins way back in kindergarten. Janna and I spent a week in my daughter's [Alli] kindergarten class in Caracas, VZ this past March. One of the striking thing the kids learn and do in kindergarten is to line up for everything ... even to go to the bathroom. They line up for recess, for lunch, for snack, to change classes, literally everything. The highest honor a kid gets in kindergarten is the rotating task of being the "line leader" for the day. Heck it is even a fun task to be the "line caboose" for the day. And it is the line leader's and line caboose's job to keep all the other kids "in line." Somehow this becomes a pattern for our lives even to the subconscious level.
I sometimes notice this phenomenon at the movie theater when there is an extraordinarily long line for the sole ticket window even in the rain and then there is another window open and no one there in line. I will ask the worker manning the booth if he is open and he will say "yes" and then I will ask why no one is in his line and he will often answer with a sheepish look on his face that he "has no idea." After I have safely secured my tickets I have tried to free those in the long line to come on over and come out of the rain and receive the most distrusting looks from so many reluctant to believe. Why is it that we are more likely to get in line behind someone else than we are to start our own? Can it really go back to our kindergarten days and then just be socially reinforced through the decades that follow?
Eventually we find ourselves a part of a human assembly line surrounded by standardization, routine and predictability. We find ourselves miserable in the mundane. One day we end up finding ourselves looking at our image in the mirror and wondering who we are and why we are. Is life arbitrary? Or is there meaning behind it? Are we unique or are we incidental? Screen writer and actor Zach Braff captures this struggle to find uniqueness while wallowing in the blandness of everyday existence masterfully in the movie, Garden State.
This film follows the lives of a group of people who seem to be going absolutely nowhere and then the death of Andrew Largeman's [Braff] mother and the intervention of one person [Sam, Natalie Portman] who refuses to give up on her own uniqueness awakens him out of his lithium-induced slumber. The story reminds us that it is easy to become an echo instead of a voice. Yet we discover even one meaningless act that stands alone as unique can give us hope that our lives can, in fact, be different. It is ironic that we can be absolutely uncertain about what it is that we are looking for and yet be absolutely certain that we haven't found it. Still we know that we are searching for something; we just don't know for what or even why.
From our first breaths we have been on a journey. There are things our souls long for, and whether we have yet recognized it or not, our lives are shaped by our search for them. We are on a quest to discover our own uniqueness ... who we are, why we are here, and where we are going.
If we find ourselves endlessly thwarted in our search for our uniqueness, we may choose to end our quests and settle for sterile lives of empty existence. We must be careful not to mistake our surrender for rest.
... To be continued ...
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Black Holes and Luminaries
Science tells us that the cosmos is ever expanding ... that it is a virtual infinite space waiting to be both discovered and explored. I find that this pretty much sums up the human spirit as well. There seems to be no end to how far we can travel within ourselves. With every breath we take, with every day we live and with every new experience we have, our souls expand. We are all on the journey of the human spirit.
There is as much mystery inside us as there is outside ... and maybe more. We've spent almost a trillion dollars in search of what is out there and yet it seems that most of us won't even give the time of day to discover what is going on inside us. If we were to carefully observe people from the inside out, we would find both black holes and luminaries. And if we choose to walk with someone for a lifetime, we will find that no matter how well we may know him or her, there remains much that we have still yet to discover.
I have been married to Janna for almost 29 years now and I can attest that she is an ever-expanding universe. The more I get to know her, the deeper I realize that she has become. I will never know her completely because she's essentially a moving target and not a stagnant one. We cannot completely know someone who is always growing, always changing, always expanding. That is what I most love about Janna ... she is not the same woman I married almost 29 years ago. She has become far more than that.
I wish I could say this was true for everyone, but sadly, I am not so sure that it is. Some people seem to live in very small universes. Their worlds have room only for themselves. While their souls have the potential to be ever expanding, they instead seem to be at the center of a collapsing universe ... no room for dreams, for hope, for laughter, for love, for others ... room really only for themselves. They find themselves very much alone, and they are very lonely. Strangely enough, most of them do not even know why. Their souls crave also. And the way that they have "gained the whole world and lost their souls" is that they have made themselves into their whole world. They have sold out.
Most of us do not actually sell our souls to the devil; we just give them away. We can choose to play it safe, to hide behind indifference, to choose the path of mediocrity. The truth is that we can swallow just about anything. But the question is, can we keep it down? We live in a world filled with indifference, apathy, detachment, conformity, compliance and acquiescing to the status quo. We may swallow, but it doesn't settle well. The human spirit has no appetite for the bland, the mundane, or even the passionless. When we stop believing that we are each something unique, something begins to die within us.
What exactly is it within the human spirit that insists on its uniqueness??? It is not enough for us to simply exist. That each of us has a unique fingerprint, a unique DNA sequence, means more to us than simply improvement in forensic science. We are nothing less than driven to find our own paths, to make our own way, to be our own persons. While we may love to have things in common with others, we desperately need to believe that we are in some way unique. We want to be both the same as and different from those around us. We want to have things in common, but we don't want to be common.
We are made up of nothing but ordinary material ... primarily carbon and water. Yet something inside us cries out that there is more to us than meets the eye. We are like a cloth made of both burlap and cashmere. We are without question on our way to becoming dust. Our souls cry out, "Is this all it means to be human, or is there more?"
Even as I write this and perhaps as you read this, there is a voice coming not from our heads but from our gut, screaming that we are more than just water, carbon and calcium. So much of our life journeys can be explained by the cravings of our souls. Our souls know their uniqueness. And a voice from somewhere deep inside us longs for us to discover it. It calls us out and beckons us to pursue it.
There is something out there to be found, and our souls are restless to find it ....
To be continued ...
There is as much mystery inside us as there is outside ... and maybe more. We've spent almost a trillion dollars in search of what is out there and yet it seems that most of us won't even give the time of day to discover what is going on inside us. If we were to carefully observe people from the inside out, we would find both black holes and luminaries. And if we choose to walk with someone for a lifetime, we will find that no matter how well we may know him or her, there remains much that we have still yet to discover.
I have been married to Janna for almost 29 years now and I can attest that she is an ever-expanding universe. The more I get to know her, the deeper I realize that she has become. I will never know her completely because she's essentially a moving target and not a stagnant one. We cannot completely know someone who is always growing, always changing, always expanding. That is what I most love about Janna ... she is not the same woman I married almost 29 years ago. She has become far more than that.
I wish I could say this was true for everyone, but sadly, I am not so sure that it is. Some people seem to live in very small universes. Their worlds have room only for themselves. While their souls have the potential to be ever expanding, they instead seem to be at the center of a collapsing universe ... no room for dreams, for hope, for laughter, for love, for others ... room really only for themselves. They find themselves very much alone, and they are very lonely. Strangely enough, most of them do not even know why. Their souls crave also. And the way that they have "gained the whole world and lost their souls" is that they have made themselves into their whole world. They have sold out.
Most of us do not actually sell our souls to the devil; we just give them away. We can choose to play it safe, to hide behind indifference, to choose the path of mediocrity. The truth is that we can swallow just about anything. But the question is, can we keep it down? We live in a world filled with indifference, apathy, detachment, conformity, compliance and acquiescing to the status quo. We may swallow, but it doesn't settle well. The human spirit has no appetite for the bland, the mundane, or even the passionless. When we stop believing that we are each something unique, something begins to die within us.
What exactly is it within the human spirit that insists on its uniqueness??? It is not enough for us to simply exist. That each of us has a unique fingerprint, a unique DNA sequence, means more to us than simply improvement in forensic science. We are nothing less than driven to find our own paths, to make our own way, to be our own persons. While we may love to have things in common with others, we desperately need to believe that we are in some way unique. We want to be both the same as and different from those around us. We want to have things in common, but we don't want to be common.
We are made up of nothing but ordinary material ... primarily carbon and water. Yet something inside us cries out that there is more to us than meets the eye. We are like a cloth made of both burlap and cashmere. We are without question on our way to becoming dust. Our souls cry out, "Is this all it means to be human, or is there more?"
Even as I write this and perhaps as you read this, there is a voice coming not from our heads but from our gut, screaming that we are more than just water, carbon and calcium. So much of our life journeys can be explained by the cravings of our souls. Our souls know their uniqueness. And a voice from somewhere deep inside us longs for us to discover it. It calls us out and beckons us to pursue it.
There is something out there to be found, and our souls are restless to find it ....
To be continued ...
Sunday, September 11, 2011
When Our Souls Need a Plumber
Sometimes I feel like my soul is nothing more than a leaky faucet ... the kind that drips all night long. It doesn't really make a loud sound but more of an incessant one. Yet after hours of drip, drip, drip the sound not only echoes but progressively intensifies. The more silent the room, the louder the drips become. And before I know it, the sound consumes the room. And I would give anything to be able to shut it off ... this is when it would be especially good to know something about plumbing. I wonder if plumbers ever have faucets that drip ... you know like cobblers whose kids have shoes that always need mending. But I digress.
After a while, if the water continues to drip for long enough, the sound moves from deafening to silence. We just can't hear it anymore. It becomes what scientists call "white noise" or background noise. The noise is still there, it is still calling out to us, but we become almost numb to it. It goes from thunder to silence and, then when we least expect it, back to thunder.
I have found soul cravings to be like that. They scream in our heads until your "ears" almost hurt but then after a while they become almost like a silent scream. We can't hear them any longer and we can almost deny that they remain at all except for the echo down deep in the hollowness of our souls. We don't really know what it is that our souls want and we seem to have struck out looking for what it is that our souls need. So as a result, we begin losing our souls ... and we try to ignore incessant dripping and just move on.
Perhaps our souls are bit like us as kids waiting tireless day after day for the ice cream truck to drive down our streets. I remember back in the day wishing that I could own my very own ice cream truck and just eat dessert all day long. That to me is a picture of what feeding my soul is like. It keeps confusing what it wants with what it needs. Or maybe my soul just isn't convinced until I am physically sick to my stomach that the former is not the latter.
Buddha may have been right when he spoke against desires: they really can make us sick. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to us is to get what we want ... consider all those lottery winners whose lives are literally destroyed by their prizes. Desires and passion can lead us down some very dark paths. Buddha must have experienced some of the same frustrations as I have and decided the only way to solve this problem was to rid ourselves of all our desires.
Now millions of his followers pursue this goal to eliminate all their desires. For him it was pretty simple: if his desires keep making his soul sick, get rid of them -- all of them. Personally, I have found this to be impossible, but I can understand the sentiment. I am not even Buddha [though some may say I am beginning to look like him ... maybe I can at least keep a few hairs on my head] but I have figured out that what my head, heart and body desire is not necessarily what my soul needs.
We can get lost in our desires and never truly find out what it is that our souls long for. Instead of facing the hard reality that what we are pursuing is not what our souls crave, we tend to just try to solve the problem by getting more -- more toys, more money, more power, more prestige, more sex, more stuff. We literally spend our lives trying to satisfy our souls. Yet some things are only a facade. Some things satisfy but for just a moment. Some things actually deaden our souls. It's kind of weird when we think about it -- to gain the whole world and lose our souls. Jesus, of course, warned us about this way back in the day.
After a while, if the water continues to drip for long enough, the sound moves from deafening to silence. We just can't hear it anymore. It becomes what scientists call "white noise" or background noise. The noise is still there, it is still calling out to us, but we become almost numb to it. It goes from thunder to silence and, then when we least expect it, back to thunder.
I have found soul cravings to be like that. They scream in our heads until your "ears" almost hurt but then after a while they become almost like a silent scream. We can't hear them any longer and we can almost deny that they remain at all except for the echo down deep in the hollowness of our souls. We don't really know what it is that our souls want and we seem to have struck out looking for what it is that our souls need. So as a result, we begin losing our souls ... and we try to ignore incessant dripping and just move on.
Perhaps our souls are bit like us as kids waiting tireless day after day for the ice cream truck to drive down our streets. I remember back in the day wishing that I could own my very own ice cream truck and just eat dessert all day long. That to me is a picture of what feeding my soul is like. It keeps confusing what it wants with what it needs. Or maybe my soul just isn't convinced until I am physically sick to my stomach that the former is not the latter.
Buddha may have been right when he spoke against desires: they really can make us sick. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to us is to get what we want ... consider all those lottery winners whose lives are literally destroyed by their prizes. Desires and passion can lead us down some very dark paths. Buddha must have experienced some of the same frustrations as I have and decided the only way to solve this problem was to rid ourselves of all our desires.
Now millions of his followers pursue this goal to eliminate all their desires. For him it was pretty simple: if his desires keep making his soul sick, get rid of them -- all of them. Personally, I have found this to be impossible, but I can understand the sentiment. I am not even Buddha [though some may say I am beginning to look like him ... maybe I can at least keep a few hairs on my head] but I have figured out that what my head, heart and body desire is not necessarily what my soul needs.
We can get lost in our desires and never truly find out what it is that our souls long for. Instead of facing the hard reality that what we are pursuing is not what our souls crave, we tend to just try to solve the problem by getting more -- more toys, more money, more power, more prestige, more sex, more stuff. We literally spend our lives trying to satisfy our souls. Yet some things are only a facade. Some things satisfy but for just a moment. Some things actually deaden our souls. It's kind of weird when we think about it -- to gain the whole world and lose our souls. Jesus, of course, warned us about this way back in the day.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
If No One Knows the Answer, Does Anyone Know the Way?
As a corollary to my posting yesterday, the world will get better when we get better. With all the progress we've made since the Enlightenment, we've got to be honest with ourselves and admit that we're not getting better, and if anything, we're only getting worse. This is the primary reason we are quickly losing our confidence in science to save us. There was a time when science held out the promise of a better world. We thought we could outgrow our primal instincts. This was in large part the hope of the Enlightenment, that we could educate and elevate ourselves out of the cycle of violence.
We thought we were the masters of progress and that one day we would no longer hate each other, abuse the powerless, instigate wars or be in any way inhumane. Such was promise of science's progress. We had essentially outgrown our need for God. We no longer needed Him to make us good. We could not only be good without God, but through the achievements of science, we could actually perpetually make ourselves better.
Then came the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even if we in United States found ourselves on the winning side, something in our souls told us that we were all losers in this. Science was not creating for us a better world, only a more dangerous one. It seems as if we can improve on everything except ourselves. So if science and God are enemies, then why do we tend to blame God for what science corrupts? Hmmm.
Even Einstein acknowledged the problem was within us: "The release of the atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." Probably no more damning words were ever spoken. He said basically it is better for us to remain stupid if we cannot become good. The less technology we have, the less damage we can do.
So now it has been 65 plus years since we learned that all the technology in the world would not create for us the paradise that has been lost. Maybe it was right to conclude that we cannot trust religion or philosophy or history or government or institutions, but one thing we know for sure is that we cannot trust science [this coming from a vocational applied scientist], and for all the same reasons. They are all connected to people, which ultimately brings us to the inseparable relationship between truth and trust.
I remember back to my senior year in high school, in Mrs. McDougal's Honors English class when I first learned of the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sarte and Albert Camus as well as the Dutch Christian existentialist Soren Kirkegaard and devoured each of their writings. For the first time in my life I was found myself seriously questioning my beliefs for both accuracy as well as for why I believed them. Suddenly everything I believed to be true in my life was scrupulously challenged. I was struck by how each writer [and their peers] and each belief system had something within in that was strangely compelling.
But eventually it also became clear that each system of thought had gaping holes and shortcomings. During these days I became quite the Socratic [and my posse had running jokes about both the Socratic way of life as well as the Aristotlean way ... the life of questioning v. the life of balance and which was superior] but even then I could see at the end it all comes down to faith. I found myself moving from one belief system to another and then to another. And I had all the passion of youth to back it up. Yet after a while I began to see these different beliefs as fluid, interchangeable and thus disposable. I couldn't help but wonder if John Locke or David Hume or Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Rene Descartes before them really knew any better than I did. No doubt they were all smarter than me, but I wondered if behind closed doors they were just as uncertain. Perhaps we were all wanderers in the same forest trying to find a fresh trail to truth.
Some believed God was just down the road. Others were convinced that it was just a dead end. Still others thought we had nothing in common except that we were all lost and trying to find our way. It is hard to be a guide when we don't know where we're going. So in the midst of all the uncertainty we made a shift from looking for the answers to looking at the questions ... which is the primary reason I liked Socrates so much [never mind that he was willing to die for his convictions].
Even when we don't know what is ultimately true, most of us would follow someone whom we absolutely trust. There seems to be an inseparable relationship between truth and trust, and God, it seems, is lost in between the two. Accuracy seems to be less important than authenticity. So if no one knows the answer, does anyone know the way?
It was in those days that I started to look for truth in an entirely new way. I stopped being so interested in finding the best idea but more the best life. Whatever I would come to believe in, it had to change more than just my mind; it had to change my life. Was any truth out there not simply worth believing in but worth becoming? What does an idea look like when it is "fleshed out" so to speak? And that is where Jesus came into the picture. His words were straight to the point. His was more than a claim to know the truth; He claimed that He WAS the truth! There really is no way to overemphasize the potential implications of this point. Could it be possible that truth is more than just an idea and that it is found only in God? What Jesus was telling us is that truth exists in God and comes only from God.
When we search for truth, we search for God. Our souls crave the One who is true.
We thought we were the masters of progress and that one day we would no longer hate each other, abuse the powerless, instigate wars or be in any way inhumane. Such was promise of science's progress. We had essentially outgrown our need for God. We no longer needed Him to make us good. We could not only be good without God, but through the achievements of science, we could actually perpetually make ourselves better.
Then came the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even if we in United States found ourselves on the winning side, something in our souls told us that we were all losers in this. Science was not creating for us a better world, only a more dangerous one. It seems as if we can improve on everything except ourselves. So if science and God are enemies, then why do we tend to blame God for what science corrupts? Hmmm.
Even Einstein acknowledged the problem was within us: "The release of the atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." Probably no more damning words were ever spoken. He said basically it is better for us to remain stupid if we cannot become good. The less technology we have, the less damage we can do.
So now it has been 65 plus years since we learned that all the technology in the world would not create for us the paradise that has been lost. Maybe it was right to conclude that we cannot trust religion or philosophy or history or government or institutions, but one thing we know for sure is that we cannot trust science [this coming from a vocational applied scientist], and for all the same reasons. They are all connected to people, which ultimately brings us to the inseparable relationship between truth and trust.
I remember back to my senior year in high school, in Mrs. McDougal's Honors English class when I first learned of the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sarte and Albert Camus as well as the Dutch Christian existentialist Soren Kirkegaard and devoured each of their writings. For the first time in my life I was found myself seriously questioning my beliefs for both accuracy as well as for why I believed them. Suddenly everything I believed to be true in my life was scrupulously challenged. I was struck by how each writer [and their peers] and each belief system had something within in that was strangely compelling.
But eventually it also became clear that each system of thought had gaping holes and shortcomings. During these days I became quite the Socratic [and my posse had running jokes about both the Socratic way of life as well as the Aristotlean way ... the life of questioning v. the life of balance and which was superior] but even then I could see at the end it all comes down to faith. I found myself moving from one belief system to another and then to another. And I had all the passion of youth to back it up. Yet after a while I began to see these different beliefs as fluid, interchangeable and thus disposable. I couldn't help but wonder if John Locke or David Hume or Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Rene Descartes before them really knew any better than I did. No doubt they were all smarter than me, but I wondered if behind closed doors they were just as uncertain. Perhaps we were all wanderers in the same forest trying to find a fresh trail to truth.
Some believed God was just down the road. Others were convinced that it was just a dead end. Still others thought we had nothing in common except that we were all lost and trying to find our way. It is hard to be a guide when we don't know where we're going. So in the midst of all the uncertainty we made a shift from looking for the answers to looking at the questions ... which is the primary reason I liked Socrates so much [never mind that he was willing to die for his convictions].
Even when we don't know what is ultimately true, most of us would follow someone whom we absolutely trust. There seems to be an inseparable relationship between truth and trust, and God, it seems, is lost in between the two. Accuracy seems to be less important than authenticity. So if no one knows the answer, does anyone know the way?
It was in those days that I started to look for truth in an entirely new way. I stopped being so interested in finding the best idea but more the best life. Whatever I would come to believe in, it had to change more than just my mind; it had to change my life. Was any truth out there not simply worth believing in but worth becoming? What does an idea look like when it is "fleshed out" so to speak? And that is where Jesus came into the picture. His words were straight to the point. His was more than a claim to know the truth; He claimed that He WAS the truth! There really is no way to overemphasize the potential implications of this point. Could it be possible that truth is more than just an idea and that it is found only in God? What Jesus was telling us is that truth exists in God and comes only from God.
When we search for truth, we search for God. Our souls crave the One who is true.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Who's to Blame?
Without a doubt the recurring question I get most from people who struggle to believe in the existence of God concerns the issue of evil and human suffering. They have a problem believing in a God who who has let us screw up the world this badly. On some level, who can blame them? It is like the kids wreaking havoc because they have been left at home alone. I know, the kids should have been more responsible, but the parents, we should have known better. Or were we totally oblivious as to what the kids were capable of?
The short version of this argument goes like this: "If there is a God, why does He allow such horrible things to happen?"
My response to this question usually goes like this ... so let's say there is no God. Is there still evil in the world? Are we not still living on a planet filled with violence? Is not our history still marred by murder, oppression, destruction and corruption? Are there not millions still dying of want while we in the west callously throw away our leftovers? If there is no God, is there still not evil? The answer, of course, is yes!
Well then, if there is no God and we still have a problem with evil, who should we hold responsible? Now this begs the question of one of the good things about there being a God is that we can blame him for everything. But say there is no God, the question remains: Who's to blame?
Who's to blame for the millions of people dying of AIDS and starvation in Africa? For the women set afire in India so that their husbands can be free to marry another woman and collect another dowry? For the millions buried in the killing fields of Cambodia? For those being hunted down and killed in Syria for opposing the government? For the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust? For the millions of children living in urban garbage dumps in Central America, homeless and alone? Remember there is no God so we can't blame him. Who's left to blame?
Oh yeah, all we have left is us.
Part of the problem we have in making sense of this life is that we cannot really even make sense of ourselves. We tend to blame God because we don't want to take responsibility for the mess we've made. Then we stop believing in God because He won't change it. Is it possible that God does, in fact, exist, and we are still fully responsible for the human condition? Hmmm.
Is it possible that God created us with the power to create the world of our own choosing???
The truth of the matter is ... it is not so much we that have a right to be mad at God so much as it is God who has a right to be mad at us! Still human nature being what it is, we still want to blame God for not fixing our problems. But exactly how would He do this? Let's consider the options.
For God to create a perfect world, there seems to be just a limited number of scenarios possible. First, He could just get rid of all of us. That would pretty much solve all of the problems right away. But ... I am personally not so much for this option ... so let's move on to the next.
He could control our every thought, our every emotion, our every motive, our every action. And since he is God, he could do this in such a way as to make us feel as if we have free will. We would all be the products of a divinely created illusion, a utopia ... a planet-wide version of the Stepford Wives ... a place where everything is perfect because we cannot truly choose for ourselves. But again, I am not to keen on this illusory solution either and I am personally grateful that God has created us as thinking creatures with the capacity to choose.
For God to create us in such a way that we can choose that which is good, true and beautiful, he must also allow us the freedom to choose that which is corrupt, false and destructive. Most of us want God to fix every wrong choice we make without taking from us our right to choose wrongly. We want to transform God into our personal "pooper-scoopers" following along behind us to clean up our messes. God, however, usually lets us make our beds and then makes us lie down in them.
There is one last option that we should also consider. Given that there is a God and that He cares about humanity and that He is deeply troubled by the human condition, how could He proceed to actively engage the human condition? If God refuses to take from us our free will and He refuses to leave the world in its present condition, what then can He do?
Here is an interesting possibility ... He could change our hearts. He could take us through a process that would move us from greed to altruism, that would move us from indifference to compassion, that would move us from hate to love, that would move us from apathy to activism. If He could change us then He could change the world. Call me crazy but this simple truth seems to be key ... the world will change when we change.
The short version of this argument goes like this: "If there is a God, why does He allow such horrible things to happen?"
My response to this question usually goes like this ... so let's say there is no God. Is there still evil in the world? Are we not still living on a planet filled with violence? Is not our history still marred by murder, oppression, destruction and corruption? Are there not millions still dying of want while we in the west callously throw away our leftovers? If there is no God, is there still not evil? The answer, of course, is yes!
Well then, if there is no God and we still have a problem with evil, who should we hold responsible? Now this begs the question of one of the good things about there being a God is that we can blame him for everything. But say there is no God, the question remains: Who's to blame?
Who's to blame for the millions of people dying of AIDS and starvation in Africa? For the women set afire in India so that their husbands can be free to marry another woman and collect another dowry? For the millions buried in the killing fields of Cambodia? For those being hunted down and killed in Syria for opposing the government? For the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust? For the millions of children living in urban garbage dumps in Central America, homeless and alone? Remember there is no God so we can't blame him. Who's left to blame?
Oh yeah, all we have left is us.
Part of the problem we have in making sense of this life is that we cannot really even make sense of ourselves. We tend to blame God because we don't want to take responsibility for the mess we've made. Then we stop believing in God because He won't change it. Is it possible that God does, in fact, exist, and we are still fully responsible for the human condition? Hmmm.
Is it possible that God created us with the power to create the world of our own choosing???
The truth of the matter is ... it is not so much we that have a right to be mad at God so much as it is God who has a right to be mad at us! Still human nature being what it is, we still want to blame God for not fixing our problems. But exactly how would He do this? Let's consider the options.
For God to create a perfect world, there seems to be just a limited number of scenarios possible. First, He could just get rid of all of us. That would pretty much solve all of the problems right away. But ... I am personally not so much for this option ... so let's move on to the next.
He could control our every thought, our every emotion, our every motive, our every action. And since he is God, he could do this in such a way as to make us feel as if we have free will. We would all be the products of a divinely created illusion, a utopia ... a planet-wide version of the Stepford Wives ... a place where everything is perfect because we cannot truly choose for ourselves. But again, I am not to keen on this illusory solution either and I am personally grateful that God has created us as thinking creatures with the capacity to choose.
For God to create us in such a way that we can choose that which is good, true and beautiful, he must also allow us the freedom to choose that which is corrupt, false and destructive. Most of us want God to fix every wrong choice we make without taking from us our right to choose wrongly. We want to transform God into our personal "pooper-scoopers" following along behind us to clean up our messes. God, however, usually lets us make our beds and then makes us lie down in them.
There is one last option that we should also consider. Given that there is a God and that He cares about humanity and that He is deeply troubled by the human condition, how could He proceed to actively engage the human condition? If God refuses to take from us our free will and He refuses to leave the world in its present condition, what then can He do?
Here is an interesting possibility ... He could change our hearts. He could take us through a process that would move us from greed to altruism, that would move us from indifference to compassion, that would move us from hate to love, that would move us from apathy to activism. If He could change us then He could change the world. Call me crazy but this simple truth seems to be key ... the world will change when we change.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Swallowing With Open Eyes
How are we to figure out what is real in this life? What is authentic? What is trustworthy? It's hard enough already but when we bring faith into the picture then it suddenly gets all the more difficult. How many religions are there in this world to choose from? This list seems almost endless. And they all claim to have the truth.
Well, at the risk of seeming intolerant and insensitive, somebody's wrong! And others would insist that everyone's wrong. At least it would seem so when it comes to finding answers.
Someone way back in the day must have decided to try to make sense of this life ... perhaps ostensibly to even help his fellow man make sense of this life. Maybe he was trying to be helpful. He may not have had all the pieces or all the answers and there were still blanks that needed to be filled in so he just filled them in wherever needed. After a while what was true and what was just "filler" became indistinguishable and both became equally "sacred" and "true." And it helped people cope. Life is difficult enough as it is and its almost impossible when nothing makes sense.
We create our own versions of truth. Perhaps we do so by accident but what if there is something more sinister going on? Call me jaded, but someone at the very beginning of a religion has to know that he is just making stuff up. I know that virtually all religions are filled with sincere people and in each religion there had to be that first genuine convert. But the guy just before him ... he knew! He knew it wasn't all real. At best he had to know that it was a hopeful guess.
I remember learning back in my college days [I was a reluctant biology major after all] that frogs cannot swallow with their eyes open. Sadly, I find that many of the people I run into have a lot in common with frogs. This is especially true in the nutritional supplement world and Christians seem especially gullible in this regard ... but I digress. There is a lot of stuff out there in the faith department that we would have to have our eyes closed to swallow ... but this extends beyond the typical boundaries of "faith" to include such things as global warming, evolution, and the other stretches of science where it has become almost a religion unto itself. Me -- I would rather swallow with my eyes wide open.
So maybe the guys who invented their religions were sincere and perhaps delusional ... L. Ron Hubbard comes to mind. Now that is so much more comforting. To their credit, though, perhaps they knew that everyone was on a search for meaning. Or maybe they were just sinister people and created belief systems to control people. Or maybe they were just reacting against a greater falsehood, a greater deception. Maybe that is what motivated people like Buddha, Confucius, Gandhi, and even Nietzsche.
Perhaps they were just sick and tired of watching people being manipulated by the prevailing false view of reality. As a reaction to it, they ended up creating a new way of thinking, a new way of believing, a new way of living. The truth of the matter is that Col. Nathan R. Jessup [played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men] was exactly wrong. It is not so much that we can't handle the truth but that we can't live without it.
Well, at the risk of seeming intolerant and insensitive, somebody's wrong! And others would insist that everyone's wrong. At least it would seem so when it comes to finding answers.
Someone way back in the day must have decided to try to make sense of this life ... perhaps ostensibly to even help his fellow man make sense of this life. Maybe he was trying to be helpful. He may not have had all the pieces or all the answers and there were still blanks that needed to be filled in so he just filled them in wherever needed. After a while what was true and what was just "filler" became indistinguishable and both became equally "sacred" and "true." And it helped people cope. Life is difficult enough as it is and its almost impossible when nothing makes sense.
We create our own versions of truth. Perhaps we do so by accident but what if there is something more sinister going on? Call me jaded, but someone at the very beginning of a religion has to know that he is just making stuff up. I know that virtually all religions are filled with sincere people and in each religion there had to be that first genuine convert. But the guy just before him ... he knew! He knew it wasn't all real. At best he had to know that it was a hopeful guess.
I remember learning back in my college days [I was a reluctant biology major after all] that frogs cannot swallow with their eyes open. Sadly, I find that many of the people I run into have a lot in common with frogs. This is especially true in the nutritional supplement world and Christians seem especially gullible in this regard ... but I digress. There is a lot of stuff out there in the faith department that we would have to have our eyes closed to swallow ... but this extends beyond the typical boundaries of "faith" to include such things as global warming, evolution, and the other stretches of science where it has become almost a religion unto itself. Me -- I would rather swallow with my eyes wide open.
So maybe the guys who invented their religions were sincere and perhaps delusional ... L. Ron Hubbard comes to mind. Now that is so much more comforting. To their credit, though, perhaps they knew that everyone was on a search for meaning. Or maybe they were just sinister people and created belief systems to control people. Or maybe they were just reacting against a greater falsehood, a greater deception. Maybe that is what motivated people like Buddha, Confucius, Gandhi, and even Nietzsche.
Perhaps they were just sick and tired of watching people being manipulated by the prevailing false view of reality. As a reaction to it, they ended up creating a new way of thinking, a new way of believing, a new way of living. The truth of the matter is that Col. Nathan R. Jessup [played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men] was exactly wrong. It is not so much that we can't handle the truth but that we can't live without it.
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