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Saturday, 17 October 2009
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To Believe Like a Child
"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with me..."
From The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Tuesday, 06 October 2009
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C.S. Lewis On Ordinary People
Do not treat people like they are disposable. They are not meant to be used, forgotten, or dismissed as being rather unimportant in the grander scheme of things. For a person's individuality represents the glory of God. Your fellow neighbor is a fearful creation, in the sense that God predetermined that their existence would be necessary to work out the greater things to come and only the fool does not feel the reverential awe towards that which bears His image.
Think of those people that frequent your life and yet someone how have escaped your attention due to the fact that you, perhaps subconsciously, have somehow justified ignoring the significance of their existence.It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously–no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner–no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
— C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory
Saturday, 03 October 2009
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These Inward Trials
I asked the Lord, that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek more earnestly His face.
I hoped that in some favoured hour
At once He'd answer my request,
And by His love's constraining power
Subdue my sin, and give me rest.
Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.
"Lord, why is this?" I trembling cried,
"Wilt thou pursue Thy worm to death?"
" 'Tis in this way," the Lord replied,
"I answer prayer for grace and faith.
"These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may'st seek thy all in me."
~ John Newton
Sunday, 14 June 2009
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"Love, generally, is that principle which leads one moral being to desire and delight in another, and reaches its highest form in that personal fellowship in which each lives in the life of the other, and finds joy in imparting himself to the other, and in receiving back the outflow of that other's affection unto himself."
~ James Orr
Thursday, 23 April 2009
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The Weight of Ideas - A Cross to Carry
Philosophy is exhausting. Before I decided to invest my mind into what the philosophy department at a secular university had to offer, I knew days would come where I would feel inadequate and isolated in the face of intellectual sophistry, which admittedly sounds so much more convincing on those days that I withdraw from my walk with God. When people ask, "What is your major?" and I reply "Philosophy," they don't get it, which is understandable as there are days when I don't get it either. Nonetheless, it is frustrating when people view the philosopher in cliches, and fail to appreciate the power of ideas in relation to their own worldview and empathetically feel the anxiety that burdens those who fight for such ideas in the trenches of academia.
Although I don't think it is my calling to bear arms with those brave born again Christian philosophers or rather scholars in the secular battlefield of ideas, I appreciate their cross to carry so much more as I have felt the weight of carrying such polemical ideas in my own undergraduate studies. For those Christians who desire to counter the hard-hitting ideas of postmodernism and naturalism in the professional world of academia need not only a scholarly mind, but a Spirit-empowered one, or else their so-called faith will snap like a twig in the name of tolerance. And if pandering does not immediately reveal what they never had in the first place, one can count on the endless storm of ideas to further test what their faith is built upon - rock or sand.
Although I don't want Christians to develop a persecution complex, I think it is accurate to say that evangelical scholars have taken up the defensive position because, as C.S. Lewis says, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” This is no new-age, powderpuff philosophy because if it is true, it will be beautiful for those who have faith in Christ and terrible for those who do not. There are no soft spots or feel good nothings scattered in the message of the Gospel. It is all or nothing. It demands your entire being and anything less is not of the Spirit. If we have the truth and the Holy Spirit has supernaturally connected us to Jesus Christ through faith, in a certain sense, we move beyond good and evil and operate in virtue of grace. We are new creatures who are once and forever more - truly alive. And all who operate outside of grace are subject to the wrath of God for all of eternity.
And this is why so many brilliant scholars understandably target the Christian worldview because its implications are extreme, particularly for themselves. But the question is "Who is willing to jump in a foxhole with merely a band of brothers (and sisters too) and face the massive army of skepticism with only a slingshot of truth and a mustard seed of faith?" Many would rather retreat and hightail it back to camp and shelter themselves where they remain comfortably ineffective.
I thank God that "faith" and "truth" are not scaling adjectives in the sense that they are absolute. You either are redeemed or you are not. Your proposition is either true or it is false. There are no degrees. Your proposition cannot be truer than mine for it is either 100 % true or 100% false. And when it comes to faith, I am either 100% justified by the blood of Christ or am 100 % subject to the wrath of God. Your faith does not save you more than my faith for the atoning work of our God upon that cross is sufficient to cover all sins, and to to believe otherwise is to deprecate the power of his deity. His grace is sufficient. You are forgiven. Be rejoiceful.
What danger lies in the future of evangelicalism if we choose to be content with our ignorance and not disciplined in our studies of all that concerns our God. What danger lies ahead of us if we dismiss theology and philosophy (and for that matter, all natural sciences and humanities) as being important only for professors and members of the clergy and not for laypersons. Let us not become empty selves who have the capacity to learn and yet willingly choose to be content with our ignorance since it is the easy thing to do. May we always be restless in our intellectual endeavors and rest firmly upon the cornerstone of our being -- Jesus, when the weight of ideas becomes too much to carry.
Because it seeps into all other disciplines, philosophy will always be necessary. Although it rightfully bows down to revelation as it's queen (at least it should), it defends her and remains her faithful servant who now fights the good fight in Western universities where theology has been exiled. It is not deserving of cliches or superficial thinking or being dismissed by many churches as being unnecessary and even "evil."
C.S. Lewis once said that "to be ignorant and simple now -- not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground -- would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."
