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Saturday, 18 April 2009

  • The Im|Possibility of Good.

    There’s one question and three beliefs that have my attention right now. The question is, Are we capable of doing anything good? The first belief is that undeniably, all people act out of self-interest. The second belief says that we always act in order to either achieve pleasure or avoid pain. The third belief says (in response to the first) that not all people do act out of self-interest, but everyone should.

    I'd say they're nearly right (unfortunately).

    Let's take the first one. The belief that everyone acts out of self-interest is called Psychological Egoism. Self-interest is the regard for one's own interest or advantage, especially with disregard for others. Nothing I do is unselfish. Altruism is dead. Everything I do is for the purpose of achieving some kind of end for myself. That’s the belief. For example, if I give to charity, psychological egoism says that I did not do it because I'm unselfish (though it appears so), but because I truly am selfish; I gave to charity only because it gives me a good feeling about what I did. If I buy a homeless man a meal, I did it not for the purpose of meeting his need, but for the purpose of making my heart pump full of satisfaction in myself. And so, in the end, it's all about me.

    Here's where it ties into the second belief, called Psychological Hedonism. Hedonism is the lifestyle that pursues pleasure as the highest virtue. So Psychological Hedonism is when a person only lives and acts in the way that grants them the greatest pleasure and/or the least pain. Every situation we come across has both Pleasure and Pain on a polar continuum:

    Pain <<<--------------|-------------->>> Pleasure



    In every situation, we evaluate whether or not a certain course of action will result in more Pleasure or more Pain. Inevitably, says Psychological Hedonism, we choose what seems to us to be the more pleasurable road, without fail. So in the circumstance of buying a homeless man a meal, I might weigh the pain of losing money that is not being used for me against the pleasure of making myself feel like a real fine guy for buying the meal. And so if I think it’s more pleasurable to keep my money, I won’t buy him a sandwich. But if I think it’s more pleasurable to feel good about myself, I might just buy that sandwich for him.

    Then there’s the third view that agrees with all of this, except that it isn’t impossible to choose pain or to choose to act in a way that isn’t going to maximize self-interest. This third belief is called Ethical Egoism – it basically sets forth that although not everyone does act out of self-interest all the time, everyone should.

    So now I’m going to borrow bits and pieces.

    From Psychological Egoism, I will borrow the principle that we cannot act unless it is out of self-interest. However, I will also borrow Ethical Egoism’s assertion that we can act beyond our self-interest. NOTE: These seem to contradict, but don’t have to. I’ll also borrow Psychological Hedonism’s idea that we will always choose the greater pleasure.

    Here we go.

    Acting out of self-interest isn’t always pride, but it certainly has the propensity to move in that direction. When we meet our needs, it is in the interest of continuing our lives. This isn't wrong or sinful by any stretch. We were created with needs. But it transforms into pride, a sort of exaltation of self as most important, when we place our needs and wants as first and foremost above all others. It becomes pride when we place our own value, and therefore also our desires for pleasure above pain, as more worthy than others' and, if we have the power to do so and feel it is necessary, we will pursue that pleasure at the expense of those around us. For example, a certain woman wants the attention of a man she's attracted to. But the man seems to be 'involved' with someone else. There are several factors that play into the outcome. She may:

    1. Tell a lie or an unfavorable truth about her competition, the second woman, in order to bring into question the desire to pursue her for the man. However, she runs the risk that man might be repelled by her conduct if he found out. She will do this anyway if the risk is low enough that her means wouldn't spoil her prize.


    2. Not do much and let things play out as they will. In this case, she may take greater pleasure in having noble character than in winning the man by foul play. And yet, she is taking the risk of experiencing the significant pain of rejection.


    3. Convince herself that she doesn't desire the man's affection anyway, and she will boost her own self-concept as higher than that of both her competition and her desire. She will take pleasure in believing she is meant for someone far better.



    Essentially, this is risk evaluation. And because we can't know the future, we weigh what we believe will be probable or improbable degrees of pain or pleasure, and if the prize is greater than the risk, we will choose that option. There is a great deal of this in the world. We seek our own benefit. We ensure that we get as much pleasure as possible. But different people have differing ideas about what is pleasurable. One student does his homework and gets good grades, but lacks a healthy social life. Another student has an enormous social network, but lacks a decent GPA. The first student foregoes the immediate pleasure for a later one he believes will be greater. The second student indulges in the immediate and doesn't see the option of a later and greater pleasure as legitimate. If at all possible, we will more than likely try to achieve both. We like to have our cake and eat it too. If we can have two cakes, that's even better.

    So there's this whole pride thing and self-serving kind of living that we experience day in and day out. But there just has to be something more than that, right? We can't be entirely selfish.

    It's true. We're not entirely selfish.

    But maybe we shouldn't sigh with relief just yet. If we aren't placing highest value on ourselves, what are we valuing? Take this example into consideration: Let’s say a soldier, in the heat of battle, throws himself onto an enemy grenade to save his fellow soldiers. We’re going to go two ways with this: 1) God is not in the picture, or 2) God is in the picture. In both cases, the ultimate existence of God is assumed; belief in Him is not.

    ~ 1. God is NOT in the picture ~


    Such an act of camaraderie is incredible. It shows a genuine selflessness on the part of the sacrificial soldier. He put his fellow soldiers' lives before his. And so the idea of acting solely on selfish pleasure is not a plausible option. If that soldier had a wife and kids at home, I'm sure the greater pleasure would be to return to them, and so, not to jump on the grenade. And if he believes there is no afterlife, then he truly acted selflessly because there would be no promise of heavenly treasure for his brave deed. His dying for those men displayed a very high value on them. So much for psychological egoism.


    Unfortunately, if this is true, and if he doesn't believe in God, then from a Christian's perspective, he acted on a principle of idolization in that moment. If he wasn't acting out of pride, he had to act out of idolatry for those men he saved.


    In other words, he transferred highest value from himself on to them. Selfless, but still fallen.


    The key word here is highest value. It’s superlative, meaning that it leaves no room for a higher value. So regardless of what we place our highest value on – whatever it might be – if it isn’t God, then it is idolatry. I wish there was a different word for it. But that’s what it is. So let’s take a look at the second option.


    ~ 2. God is in the picture. ~


    If the soldier believes in God and believes in an afterlife, he is not able to escape the possibility that he saved his comrades out of selfish motives since there is a promise of treasures stored up in heaven. So unlike the man who doesn’t believe in God, it is possible that his act of bravery and sacrifice was selfish at heart and in motive. But let’s put that to the side for just a moment.


    He gave his life up for his friends. With the right mindset, this would not be idolatry for the believing soldier, who would give high value to his fellow soldiers not because they have any intrinsic value in themselves, but because he understands that God values them, and so he must also. Knowing that the perfect God, who assigns value perfectly, values each man enough to die for them, it only makes sense for the Christian soldier to do the same.



    Both options have special circumstances. But by and large, these are rules. So the first option eliminates self-serving motives (because of death), but guarantees idolatry. Then the second option leaves open the possibility of self-serving motives (because of life after death), but eliminates idolatry.

    So what happens if we take the principle of the first option into everyday life? We find that death is the only reason why self-serving motives would be eliminated. And so, again working from the assumption that God exists, the unbelieving individual is unable to act beyond either pride or idolization. He either acts with himself as the Highest Being, or he erects something/someone else as Highest Being. There is no other choice.

    The believing individual isn’t so easily let off the hook. I would say that every believing individual is caught in exactly the same predicament. Where the unbelieving individual may do good things because of his own self-interest, the believing individual may do the same in reminding himself that he will be richly rewarded in heaven for his good deeds here on earth, and so he might make that his motive. And where the unbelieving individual may value something other than himself as Highest Being, the believing individual may do the same in forgetting to regard God in His rightful place as Highest. The same fatalistic dichotomy faces both people. Except for one thing. The individual who puts his trust in God has the Holy Spirit, has God at work within him. This, and nothing else, changes the circumstances.

    The Holy Spirit in me, alone, is able to make me capable of doing any good thing selflessly. And it is the Holy Spirit in me, alone, that is able to make me capable of creating/recognizing, and acting on, an accurate value hierarchy based solely on what God Himself values.

    Let me put it this way: we don't have a choice not to sin. We’re not capable. Hope that makes your skin crawl like it does mine. Because honestly, I'd like to think I'm capable of doing something right. But God is capable within me.

    The only reason I have to believe I have the hope of doing anything but sin is His work within me. Otherwise, my only choice is between Pride and Idolization.

    What makes God so great is that He is able to work real, genuine, authentic good through what would otherwise be sin. I make mistakes all the time. I sin all the time. I do all kinds of things that I know I shouldn't do, and a ton of things I don't even know I'm doing. And yet somehow, God takes my secretly self-serving act of charity and transforms it so that it actually blesses somebody. He takes the compliment that I didn't actually mean when I said it, and metamorphoses it so that it actually speaks beauty into a downcast life. He takes my banal attitude towards taking communion on Sunday, and replaces it with a spirit that all-in-all is remembering with great fear and intense love the sacrifice that it cost His Son to make real communion with Him possible.

    The amazing thing is exactly that: I am rendered impossibly helpless to redeem my own acts, to transform selfish motives into perfectly selfless ones. To metamorphose false words into authentically true ones. To replace vacant practices with substance-filled ones. Imagine that you have in your hands a sheet of white paper that needs to be white when it arrives in the hands of its intended recipient. And it is dripping with black ink. You can do no more to make your actions and motives pure and perfect again than you could to turn that ink-blotched paper back to white. But let's say Someone takes your blackened sheet of paper and turns it clean and new en route to the recipient. All is good. Except He turns it green. It is a perfect green. A brilliant green. But it is not white. This is because even what we intended to do is not exactly what is needed to be. He knows better what the recipient needs.

    And so he changes everything.

    That's my God.

    I want to do my very best, I want to strive to have pure motives, to have right thoughts, to act selflessly, to live in such a way that something, anything, would be worthy of giving. But regardless of my efforts to do good or to not sin, it is Him in the end. And it is only Him. So I'll pray for grace in every moment. I'll live by faith that he'll give it. And I'll love out of the gratitude that I have for everything He does through and for me. I alone can do nothing. He in me can do anything.

    O to grace how great a debtor
    Daily I'm constrained to be
    Let Thy goodness, like a fetter
    Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee

    Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
    Prone to leave the God I love
    Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it
    Seal it for Thy courts above

    - "Come Thou Fount (of Every Blessing)"

Friday, 17 April 2009

  • Pride.

    I think I’ve become fully convinced that “humble” is the farthest thing from who I am. I’m beginning to see the innumerable ways in which I take pride in myself. I will try to explain them, though at great risk of sounding incredibly conceited and self-absorbed. If true, maybe it will, and maybe it should, cut me down a notch or two. But I hope that it might, in some way, resonate with you also.

    We all do this thing called “self-talking.”

    Say you’re at the start down a long and empty hallway. I would think that everyone hopes someone else doesn’t round the corner on the other end while you’re still a distance off. Because really, when do you say, “Hello”? If you say it too soon, then there’s not much to say until you pass them, and so more often than not, an awkward silence follows what would otherwise be a very friendly and warm personal greeting. On the other hand, no one wants to be that guy who doesn’t say anything at all, much less make any sort of eye contact all the way down the hall, pretending not to see or hear the other person approaching whatsoever. Instead, he keeps his eyes low, fixed on the floor.

    As if the tiles he’s walked over about a trillion times were really that interesting.

    And so we’re faced with this dilemma, to which, when I find myself faced with it, I have merely compromised. I will say, “Hello” to the person down the hall while they’re still near their end – to which they reply, “Hello, how are you doing?” – and will proceed to ask them how they are (all the while not really expecting or maybe even wanting a real answer other than a simple, “Good, thanks”), which gives us just enough time to pass one another. That is my first option, which actually could be entirely dependent on the other person’s desire to ask me how I am doing. To which I simply beat them to the punch. If I am slightly less familiar, or less interested, in the person down the hallway, I’ll just pull out my cell phone, act like I’m checking a text message, or something of the sort, and just in time I’ll look up from my phone and quickly make eye contact just long enough to slip out a polite “Hello,” but short enough for it to appear nonchalant.

    All of this thinking happens in a split second, in only a moment. We make decisions based on how we want to appear or “come off” to other people. In a split second I choose to stand or posture myself in a certain way instead of in another way, maybe preferring one stance over the other in the event that I’ve spotted a very attractive girl in the coffee shop I might be in.

    Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like we sit around consciously thinking of these things. All I know is that these thoughts stream through our minds at about a thousand miles per hour, and yet come and go so quietly you would hardly believe you’re thinking them at all.

    We are constantly self-talking.

    Perhaps a large part of why this happens is that we have little else to worry ourselves over. This seems to be an “America” thing – this could be a totally unfounded assumption, but it appears so – that we Americans seem to think about ourselves far more often than the rest of the world thinks about themselves. It’s much the way a middle-school girl might seek out “drama” in the gossip and recent happenings of the other students. “Did you hear that Bobby told Tim that he likes Stephanie?!” Were she to have more pressing issues to think about, like how she’s going to feed her two starving younger brothers in a third-world African country because dad left them three years ago and mom’s HIV has made her too weak to look after her children, I think she’d have less use for such pointless thinking.

    I think that we as Americans are so comfortable, with relatively and comparatively fewer and more minor issues in our lives, that we feel the need to make unimportant things very important indeed. Since we don’t have a whole ton of really important things to think about, we make something important, and we think about it.

    Because we think ourselves pretty important, we think about ourselves.

    Because we think image is important, we think about how others are seeing us.

    Because we think style is important to image, we think about which coat looks best on us in cold weather, not which coat best keeps us warm.

    Of course, it is best to have a coat both good-looking and warm also. But I know that when I enter a store, I shop. If I really wanted the warmest coat a store had, and warmth was my first concern with image trailing far behind it, all I’d have to do is walk into the store as far as the nearest employee, ask them for their warmest coat, get my size, and be finished. And because there are a great many people who do not do this, it becomes clear that we are often primarily concerned with fashion, with function as a secondary. We can only have the luxury of worrying about fashion at all if there is no particularly hard-pressing, absolute necessity for function.

    Were we living in the sub-arctic north, fashion and appearance might be moved from high priority to trivial pursuit status in our minds.

    This certainly carries into the whole of our thought lives. Maybe the reason why so many of us are so concerned with how other people perceive us is because comparatively to the rest of the world, we have little to actually worry about, and so have more time to think about ourselves.

    Maybe we don’t really have many actual concerns, just a good many inconveniences.

    Maybe I’m speaking for more people than I should, and maybe I’m the only one who really experiences this strange thing. Maybe I’m head-and-shoulders conceited above the rest, but I don’t think that to be quite true. Something tells me we’re all in this.

    I think it comes out most clearly in this: a friend of mine once talked to me about his discovery of, and attraction towards, a certain beautiful girl on campus. He had talked to her several times, they laughed over little jokes together. Crossing campus, maybe she even smiled at him. Huge deal, I know. But I only heard about it because he had been processing and thinking about this girl and their conversations, her mannerisms, her style, what she could have meant when she said this or that.

    The things we love most are the things we think about most often. And so when I come to realize that I think about myself quite often, I can only conclude that I love myself. But if I am called to love others as I love myself, why are the majority of my thoughts about me?

    I used to think that my thoughts were pretty well-balanced. I think about myself sometimes, but I often think of other people as well. In fact, I realized, there is a great deal of thought that goes on that concerns the people around me.

    Except that it doesn’t, really.

    See, I’ve learned to think about people as they relate to me.

    In itself, this is not at all a bad thing. We are hard-wired to mentally connect ourselves to the people in our lives. We think in terms of relation. I think of my sister not only as Meghan, an autonomous and independent individual, but also in terms of her relation to me. She is my sister. Categories like mom and dad, uncle, cousin, great-grandmother, brother-in-law only make sense if they are connected, if they are understood in relation to you, personally. This is not what I’m talking about.

    I’m talking about the very reason why it’s so hard to pray to God for other people and not get bored.

    Because when I pray for other people, it means that I think about that person abstractly. It means I think about them, about their family affairs and job concerns and personal situations, about their houses and finances and medical conditions in a way that is disconnected from how those things relate to me. I quickly lose interest because hardly any of it has anything to do with me, which is why so many of us catch ourselves somewhere in the middle of a prayer taking off down mental rabbit trails which, by the time we realize we have, indeed, trailed off, seem to have untraceable relevance to where we started.

    Oh, how conceited we really are.

Thursday, 16 April 2009

  • Treasure.

    I search for significance in relationships. It is what it is. And when relationships fail me, when friendships seem to be falling apart or when I feel forgotten or lonely in a group of people, uncared for by the people I care so deeply about, I lose all perspective of my significance. I doubt that I am treasured by anyone at all. I deeply desire to be included, to be invited, to be involved, to just be in something. When Sunday-night dinner rolls around, when friends are headed out to eat, and it seems everyone's been invited but me, when it seems I've either been intentionally excluded or forgotten altogether, it causes me to doubt the significance of my role in others' lives. I doubt I play a significant role at all. I feel that I play a role, but it takes on a convenience that makes my stomach turn. I don't want to be a convenient friend. I want to be the person you'd go out of your way for. I want to be the first person you want to tell about something big that just happened your life. I want to be truly significant to someone.

    But I'm often disappointed. I receive no text message or phone call, and I'm let down. I'm not thought of when something big happens in your life, and I feel marginalized. I'm not as close to you as you are to me.

    I'm the safety-net friend.

    And nobody wants to be a safety-net friend - the kind of friend that everyone wants to have, because they're dependable, but doesn't always want to be around. Many times I try to go to great lengths just to make myself available and approachable to anyone who might want to go out and grab coffee and just unload, to throw off the mountains they're carrying on their shoulders, to point out the giant storm cloud over their heads. That's the best way that I show my love for those I care about; I do my best to make myself available to them. But when I feel taken advantage of, I lose all joy in being there for you. When I'm your last resort, "the one person I can depend on" - I don't want anything to do with you, because you've made me feel like that's all I'm good for.

    "Well, if all else fails, I know I can count on you."

    Stab.

    But not everyone communicates love in the same way. This is the way it translates to me:

    No quality time = You don't care.

    I'm not a high-maintenance kind of guy. I don't need, or even want, a lot. I just need to spend time with you. No one wants to sound needy and no one wants a needy friend. But we genuinely want to be wanted. Bottom line. Truth is - if we're willing to see it - we're all needy. We all have needs that must be met and we all have expectations that we desire to be fulfilled. When they aren't, we are disappointed. My disappointment happens to stem from lack of quality time with the people I want to spend quality time with most. So I feel I have to turn to something else that will make me feel significant.

    I begin to measure myself by how productive I am.

    I will write a profound discourse.

    I will compose a beautiful song.

    I will strive to do my best at work.

    I will give great gifts.

    I will do everything I can to become a valuable asset to someone. I will work hard at finding the things that I can offer people so that I'm never forgotten, so that I'm never left out. Because if I am something that others feel that they need, they won't leave me behind.

    Notice how it comes full circle, back to relationships - I just used productivity as a means.

    It's not that what I do isn't genuine. I write out genuine thoughts of mine, I compose truly authentic music, I really do desire to do my best when I'm working, and I actually love to give the gifts that I give. But I realize that if I do a little digging, and if I'm a little more honest with myself than is comfortable, I'll find that these things, to some greater or lesser degree, have been corrupted in my desire to be desired for exactly who I am. Everything inside of me is tired of convenient friendships, or dependent relationships. I want to be wanted apart from what others want to take from me. I want to be wanted for me.

    So who am I?

    There are wise sayings all throughout life that we encounter and understand and even apply to our lives without fully recognizing what they mean. I may have heard a particular maxim that makes sense, except that on one particular day, it dawns on me in a whole different light, and suddenly it's real. I've experienced that many times over the past 2 years or so, more frequently than usual. And I'm right now in the place where I know in my head and from hearing it day in and day out that my 'significance/identity needs to be rooted in Christ.'

    Okay. I get it. But I won't get it entirely until God moves in me to change my perspective, to make it dawn on me suddenly like with the many other things I thought I understood but didn't. So to answer the question of who I am, I can only reply that I don't know.

    I really don't.

    I think that other than what I see of it in the way my parents love me, I don't know what it means to be loved for the person I am, apart from what I produce and apart from the friendships that I have. I know that God loves me, and I think that's another one of those sayings that finally knocked me out cold in the past two years. But I can't say I feel that from very many people at all. It's made me think about all the ways in which I've been less than a true friend to others. It's made me think about how often I've made Jesus into my safety-net friend. It's made me think about how, if I can bear to look at it this way, I've attempted to buy my friendships with my time, my energy, my humor, my advice, my helpfulness, my dependability. I want to be treasured for more than what I can offer.

    Meanwhile, through disappointment and fighting against bitterness or cynicism, I will wait for the Lord to show me who I am and who I'm supposed to be. I'll pray to the only God above who can open my eyes to my true significance. I am a treasure.

    I am.

    I just don't know it yet.

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

  • Colorblind.

    We can't know anything - anything at all, for sure.

    Stick with me.

    No one person is capable of saying any objective statement in and of themselves. Life is uncertain. We work by probabilities. When I jump out of my bed in the morning I fully believe the floor won't come crashing down beneath me, and so the chances of it catching me when I jump down are very high, so I say, "I know this will catch me." But we don't. We don't know for sure. We don't know anything for sure. I could calculate my weight, the height from which I would be jumping, the speed and force with which I would meet the floor. I could mathematically and systematically work through the physics going on in the floor, the stability of its materials, its support systems beneath, and its foundation. But we take "facts" for granted in that I don't know that I-beams and concrete are completely solid and will hold my weight if I jumped on it from my bed; but I believe it will, because it always has, and people in positions of authority (architects, physicists, scientists) say that it will produce such-and-such a result.

    But we only believe it because it's been true so far.

    The only way to know anything at all is to know everything altogether. You have to be omniscient. In order to more clearly demonstrate what I mean, imagine that you have an incredible capacity for knowledge - you have no limit, so to speak, to what you can know or understand thoroughly. Nothing escapes you. Let's say you "know" these things:

    FACT 1
    FACT 2
    FACT 3
    FACT 4

    These represent all the facts of the universe and beyond, from past, present, and future. But to put a spin on my previous statements of omniscience, let's just say that there is another, unknown, fact.

    Just one:

    (?)

    We may think that we know that FACT 1 is true or that FACT 2 is true, and so on. And if we had the capacity to know everything in the universe, except one singular fact, then really we know nothing at all. It only takes one fact, a singular missing piece of information, to throw everything else into doubt. This is because (?) can, without us knowing what it is, say that FACT 1 is false. Or that FACT 2 is false. Or that FACT 1, 3, and 4 are false and only 2 is true. One missing piece is all it takes.

    So how should we live? How should we operate? If I cannot know anything for sure, how can we function at all? The chair I plan on sitting on - it cannot be certain that it will hold me when I go to sit on it.

    So do I sit in faith or stand in disbelief?

    The answer is that we start - we must and cannot NOT start - with or without a belief in God (an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-good being). Either way, we live by faith. Except the first is a God-centered faith, and the other is faith in the god of self (which determines what is or is not truth based on its own authority).

    For the purpose of understanding how we, as Christians, merge this idea that "We cannot know anything objectively," with "Truth exists," without contradicting ourselves and without defying logic is simply this: There is objective truth, revealed to us by God. God is truth.

    If God is truth, then we encounter him constantly. In our dialogues with one another, in our private thoughts of the mind, in our senses and our feelings, we encounter God Himself. If there is any mode of information transfer between a person and anything else, including other people, if we understand anything at all in life, it is God revealing some minute part of Himself to us. The problem lies in the our incapability to distinguish between what is true and what is not true. Even lies are grounded in truth, in God, except that it has been distorted.

    There are tests to determine whether or not a person is colorblind. There are lots of small and large circles either colored green or red shades. A person who is colorblind can't tell the difference between the two colors. In the same way, we are colorblind to truth, in that we cannot distinguish between truth and untruth. We have tests that we believe help us determine whether something is true or false, but it's only because we put our faith in our observed accuracy of those tests insomuch as they are consistent. But when it comes down to it, consistency doesn't mean truth. Consistent means consistent. Lies can be consistent, at least until they are measured up against truth. But when truth is unknown, a lie can go undetected. Consistently.

    The idea, our only response, the only thing that makes sense in a world where information - the true and the false and the mysterious - all seem to blend into such an inseparable mix, is faith. We must live by faith. Whether we recognize it or not, even if we'd rather not like to admit it, we are faith-beings. We act in faith. We irresistibly resort to belief in order to function. I just happen to believe also in God and his desire to reveal Himself to me accurately. This God, being good in His very nature, doesn't desire to mislead us. And so there are things that He reveals to us that are truly true - they are a part of Himself. Our responsibility is to sort through what we've been told - through our senses, our reason, our experience, our faith - and pray to Him who knows everything that He will guide us in discovering more and more of Him. He wants us to know Him.

    And so I have to believe that God exists, that God determines truth because He is Truth, and that therefore, God knows everything. I've got to believe that God reveals truth to people, via sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, past experience, intuition, instinct, reason. I have to believe that this God is good and that He won't trick us, and will guide us in discovering Himself, helping us to distinguish between the red and the green, the true and the false, and between what we can know and what we can't.

    I have to live out the things I believe God is revealing to me as true, and so in every action, there is faith.

    In every moment of life, I have no choice but to live by faith, to constantly grab hold of the only One who knows everything and the only One who can assure me of anything.

    God is Truth. We are colorblind. Faith is everything.

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

  • Waiting to Starve.

    They say that when you fast, you do it for a reason.

    I've never really fasted before.

    Not like fasting for a day and a half is really any fasting at all. To be honest, at the offset I thought to myself, "There's no way I'm gonna make it through today. I just really kinda love that 'food' stuff. A lot." So like a bravehearted young boy, I threw open my door, set off and almost immediately remembered what today was: Monday. Monday was kind of like Wednesdays and Fridays, days in which classes began at 8 am, and I would get to breakfast about 10 minutes before Faith and Learning with Professor Worrall, and scarf down the poorly cooked, powdered, scrambled eggs along with a glass of orange juice and a poppyseed bagel - toasted and spread with cream cheese to perfection - which would be carried out of the Student Dining Room almost as soon as it had been set down on my tray.

    None of which I would have the pleasure of experiencing today.

    Lunch was just as bad, since my 11 am class tended to make me particularly hungry. Why this was, I never found out. My stomach started to growl and moan, even ache, but I think my body decided to quit its childish tantrum at just about 1 pm.

    Childish.

    A speaker in chapel that morning had used a similar word, and it grabbed me as if by the collar, lifted my feet off the floor and demanded my full attention. The word lingered and haunted me.

    'Infantile...'

    With such disgust I remembered it; like the way you gag when you vomit. Because, like an infant can't resist the demand for food when he is hungry, I've demonstrated that my will to stave off sin, to tighten the reins and pull myself together when all my heart wants is a bite from that apple in the middle of Eden, is miserably and contemptibly inadequate. And because I desire it more than anything at that moment, I cave. How sad to think my will to resist sin is less than that of even a child, and comparable to that of an infant.

    How humbling.

    I kept fasting. There is something intrinsically self-revealing about the nature of hunger. At that point, I hadn't felt any hunger pains in a while, or really at all for that matter, and when a day ago I had thought I couldn't do it for 24 hours, I realized I could realistically go without food for a week or so before feeling any serious repercussions. Part of me wanted to push myself to see what it is like to experience that kind of hunger. How far can I go? I began to have a heightened sensitivity to any mention of food. Everywhere I looked, there was food. My roommate eating cereal. My friends eating lunch. A spoon I found under the couch.

    It was just before lunch the second day when I decided I would eat. I had realized an enormous parallel between this experience and my spiritual journey up to this point in my life. When I eat regularly, sometimes food gets to become routine and bland. I want something sweeter, saltier, spicier, but all the SDR is serving is the same old stuff and I'm sick of it. I just want something more. When I'm consistently eating up the Word, it starts to get routine and bland. I start to not like it. It's not like I don't enjoy reading the Bible. I like to read the Bible just the same as I like to eat food. But seriously, don't ask me to have it every day. I like steak just as much as the next guy, but I ain't going to eat it all the time. I mean, Taco Tuesday is great, but... it's every single Tuesday. And as much as my food may be one of the only reasons my body can function from day to day, I start to loathe the buffet that's available to me. So what do I do? I stop talking to God and reading his Word.

    At first, this is a great change of pace. Everything seems a little more alive, and I love the freedom of throwing off my "duty" to pray or read. (Even with eating, doesn't it get a little annoying that we have to stop what we're doing - shopping, working, playing - three times or more a day to refuel?) So it's great for a while. And I wish I could say it took me a day and a half to begin to desire my old routine again, to desire God again, to enjoy him like I used to. But I can't honestly say that because by lunch time my second day, I still wasn't even hungry. Why eat?

    And with that question I gagged again.

    Why do I feel like I need to wait until I'm starving and emaciated spiritually before I go to God again? Why do I wait until I'm hungry?

    I think what fasting made me realize is that while in the middle of day two, I didn't at that moment have a searing necessity for food, but I missed the joy of eating. I find joy in eating good food. And so I ate at lunch not because I was in need to eat again, but because I realized it is senseless for a human being to wait until he is starving to eat again. I wonder what makes us think that it isn't the same way with God.

    I fasted because I didn't want God or see any reason to want him. And still, with an empty stomach, and with hardly a pang of new hunger for God, he provided me with more than enough to chew on.

    Either way you look at it, I'm eating again.

acofspades

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    • Name: Tony
    • Country: United States
    • State: Illinois
    • Birthday: 3/28/1989
    • Gender: Male
    • Member Since: 11/13/2004

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About Me

  • Get me in a conversation about anything spiritual, and I'll talk for hours. It's kinda just the way I learn things best. One-on-one conversation makes me uncomfortable. I'm learning to get better with that. I spend a lot of my time in my head. I need to be around people who don't make a big deal out of things. I want to change the world, but I don't know how. I'm skeptical of complements. They make me uncomfortable too. Dishonesty and manipulation would be great ways to end our friendship. I value honesty. If it's done, it's done right. I procrastinate. And I tell some pretty lame jokes.

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