Quick update

Parts II and III of "A House Divided Against Itself" have been written, but are waiting for transcription. I should be getting to those posts over the weekend. Part II will deal mainly with the misuses of Scripture that have been used to deny rights to women. This same theological underpinning will play a part in Part III, which deals mainly with the practical nature of injustices that are committed towards men: for to see the injustice in one and to confront it must mean seeing the injustice in the other case and confronting it just as directly.

Complacent in the miraculous

Don't worry--I'll be getting back to the series I started soon...I just wanted to offer this remark given the timeliness of the subject matter.

While I think the actual premise of Stephen Hawking's recent statement that the universe was in essence "fated" to create itself because of its own physical laws--laws whose presence is completely unexplained since if there is nothing, then there is also nothing for any laws to be grounded in--I will go into no further detail on the actual argument, as other sites are doing very well at addressing these more direct issues and exposing the fundamental flaws in Hawking's argument. (Though I might make the comment that if laws somehow pre-existed all somethings in this universe, then you open the possibility of a multiverse, and if there's a multiverse, then how did IT get there? You're right back to the question of a first cause and hence a Creator...)

Rather, I wanted to offer a meditation on the nature of...well, nature itself, and the miraculous.

I should state that I have great respect for Professor Hawking's intellect, and perseverance in his profession in the face of serious adversity. However, that doesn't stop me from disagreeing completely with his conclusion, and suspecting that perhaps he's not exactly a disinterested party in this argument. I don't mean that to suggest anything malicious, of course--rather, I think it's quite notable that Hawking doesn't acknowledge the miraculous when many people, from an outside perspective, would suggest that he himself is quite possibly the beneficiary of a major one. His survival with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) is quite simply unprecedented. Especially to those who have known people who have this disease and have not shown Hawking's longevity, the miraculousness of this is quite obvious.

I wondered how it was that one who is constantly experiencing such an unusual and miraculous happening as this would not acknowledge that indeed it is a miracle, would find no reason to suspect that there is something beyond the deterministic forces of physics. Even to conclude that the human will was capable of making a difference, without even acknowledging deity, would seem more sensible from an outside perspective.

Yet as I thought about it, I realized that there's something about the kinds of miracles that get our attention in life, and which ones don't. When you read the Bible, there are many examples of sudden, "bolt-out-of-the-blue" miracles: voices speaking from the sky, vivid visions, and even life and death themselves dealt out at the spoken word of God. These jolt us out of our routines--we are very ready to acknowledge that these are far from everyday experiences.

But not all Biblical figures that we are familiar with seem to recognize the miraculousness of the circumstances in which they are involved. It's interesting to consider that Abraham and Sarah had fixated upon having children, only recognizing that sudden event as a miracle. Yet it is made quite clear that their lifespan is not one commonly lived by people in their time. That in and of itself was a miracle right there, yet they were so fixed upon the one they wanted that they never saw this other miracle that they lived every day. There's another reason they didn't see it as well, I think: the fact that it was every day. It wasn't a dramatic bang...rather, a set of circumstances that crept up quietly, slowly, and in a drawn-out manner.

That's what I think may have happened in Hawking's case--being in the thick of it, so to speak, and understandably being concerned with the hope of a better future outcome, may have made what seems obvious from the outside very difficult to see indeed. It's a matter of perspective, and I think that we should all take the time, as Christians, to step back and look at some of the "quiet" and "slow" circumstances in our lives that are also miracles from God, not just the quick, bold bolts out of the blue.

A House Divided Against Itself, Part I

Today I begin the first of a series of posts about gender roles for us as Christians--to examine the distortions of these roles that have been perpetrated both by those who do and do not claim Christianity.

In modern Christianity, the debate has mostly centered around the rights and the dignity of women: the role of women in marriage, in service of God, as participants in the affairs of society, and the Christian response to violence and injustice done to women. There have been many and severe problems in this regard, of course--and I will address these, but what we as a society and as a faith have ignored of late is that there have also been very real and painful assaults against the rights and dignity of men, and we as Christians are called to take it seriously, to respond with support wherever there is injustice.

Looking all the way back to our brief glimpse of humanity before we betrayed God, we see Adam created and taught how to use his power of speech to name the creatures he encounters. As he does so, he is also learning how to think about the world around him; he recognizes the natural order of male and female, and he comes to realize that there is no being with a physical form, a mind, and a soul compatible to his. He feels the need in himself for this--he feels loneliness, but it's a very different experience than what we know in a world where our relationships with God and those around us are so badly disrupted: this feeling teaches him, and shows him that he has been made to be compatible with another, to be part of the exchange of love. He knew this feeling and understood with a depth we rarely do these days that he would be answered. And he was. God created Eve, and together they began to experience what humanity was meant to be.

As to the love they experienced during that time--love is a dynamic thing, not a static one: it must flow from heart to heart in order to truly live. This dynamic is inherent in the trinitarian nature of our God; one need only observe the relationship between Jesus and His Father during His time on Earth to see just how dynamic and alive such a relationship is, in the truest sense. We were made for a relationship with God far greater than that which we have in this world, and Jesus died for our sins to mend what we could not mend on our own.

We were created as reflections in miniature of God's own nature, and our natural relationship--male and female united to each other--was intended to point the way towards that far greater nature. We were never intended to be set at each other's throats and to be caught up in a cycle of mutual blame and shame, any more than we were meant to suffer physical pain and die. And if we are Christians--if we accept Jesus' help to set our relationship right with God, then surely the love and comprehension that flows from that should compel us to set our relationships right with each other.

Of course, being finite beings, we are obviously not identical to each other as men and women. We should not be surprised that certain traits and gifts are more frequently distributed to one gender or another: this is not a popular thing to say these days, but it is readily evident in the way we were designed. Yet we do a disservice to each other--and we disarm ourselves in our battle against the evil around us--if we do not treat each man and woman as an individual creation of God and we interfere with how that person is meant to serve Him simply because it is less common.

I will leave you this time with a point to ponder: to be a Christian is not to be a misogynist or a misandrist (one who hates men). It is not to advocate the rights of one to the exclusion of or above those of the other, or to take prior victimization as an excuse to hate or dominate others. It is to be one who loves and honors all of God's creations and addresses injustice in any form where it is found. And even when the world would like to give us power that we could use to oppress others--just as Jesus refused to take up the call of the Zealots to lead an armed rebellion when His work was to pour Himself out for our sake (kenosis), we are not to take the false crowns of the world upon ourselves...we are to surrender worldly glory, to pour it out, and to serve one another rather than ourselves.

In my next two posts I will speak of the types of power we must refuse to take for ourselves as Christians. Post II will address the inequities we have done towards women out of this distorted order--Post II will address those done towards men.

"I'll pray for you."

We know we've got a real problem when a phrase like that has become--at least in pop culture portrayals--a sign of condescension.

The majority of the time, it isn't...it is a sincerely-spoken phrase, out of genuine compassion for a person and whatever difficult or painful situation they may be going through. We know as well that prayer is also at times something like a weapon, a powerful force God allows us to take part in, against the forces of darkness. But sometimes, we choose to wield the wrong kind of power.

"Prayer" as an offensive weapon has been with us for thousands of years...a perversion of what should be a healing act. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) is one of the clearest examples of this: the Pharisee gives a prayer of "thanks" that he is not like the sinful man sharing the room with him. In other words, in the act of prayer he is attempting to prop himself up at someone else's expense!

What right do we have to prop ourselves up at anyone else's expense, when we too are guilty--as C.S. Lewis put it (I paraphrase)--of high treason against the Almighty?

We might not express our inner hearts in public as blatantly as the Pharisee of the parable did, but when a Christian ends an argument with someone whose behavior or belief they disagree with with the words, "I'll pray for you," the tone is sometimes quite unkind. I know I've had it directed to me after expressing an opinion that someone disagreed with...and it very much struck me as an assertion of superiority rather than a blessing.

I don't think we should shy away from offering prayer. But I think we might do better to think of ourselves as prayer servants: when we undertake to pray for someone. It is no accident that we often kneel to pray...it is a humbling act. It is not a tool for stoking feelings of superiority, and conveying such an attitude towards others. When we do volunteer prayer, we need to make sure to do it lovingly, and with a servant's heart. Other times--and we should rely on the Holy Spirit for discernment here--it may be best to pray quietly.

But whatever we do, prayer should be an act of servitude. That does not stop it from being a powerful weapon against evil...indeed, it is by serving in accordance with God's ways that it really means something.

And with that as a guide, I believe we can pray in a manner that truly will heal hearts.

A Miracle I Can Understand

One thing I will never understand is the mindset that a phenomenon, once explained by science, somehow becomes stripped of its beauty and miraculous nature, a view famously summed up by William Wordsworth when he said, "We murder to dissect." Yet the more I have read about the natural sciences, the more I have observed nature, the more its wonder increases in my eyes. And the more I come to appreciate the depth and degree of God's artistry. The fact that I learn about the scientific principles behind those acts of creation takes nothing away from that...indeed, I am even more amazed.

This is an area where I feel both many Christians and non-believers have a misconception. The suggestion here is that to explain a natural phenomenon is to somehow divorce it from God. This mentality leads to the idea of a "God of the gaps"--that is, that God is only responsible for and active in those areas where we have no explanations...yet. And as we keep discovering more, under such a theory the role of God is rolled further and further back. For an atheist, the implication is that God will eventually be squeezed out (or boxed into a near-infinitesimally small corner grossly unbefitting of His description as an omnipotent deity). For Christians, the risk we run is that we will only recognize as a "miracle" that which seems to contravene ordinary experience and even common sense. We may even risk susceptibility to fakes because of a desire to see something that seems to flagrantly violate the laws of nature.

That is not to say that there cannot be miracles that do circumvent, accelerate, or reverse natural processes, that it can never happen. They do. But how is it that we can't recognize things according to their natural, designed working order as miracles too?

I am one of those who believes that what science describes is indeed accurate. And I see God's hand in it all of the billions of years and the indescribable multitudes of subatomic particles. And to think that all of that, over such unimaginable spans of time, had to go into designing each and every one of us individually, and everything around us...it is awe-inspiring, and faith-inspiring!

The one who was in the incredibly difficult position, thousands of years ago, of having to render the vision I believe they truly had of the Creation in terms that were available in the world at that time, so that they could convey it to those around them, could not be expected to do so as though they were writing a 21st-century science book. Why should we expect that? I do not say this to diminish the skill, intelligence, or the divine inspiration of the individual who received this vision to transcribe into what we now know as Genesis. I think the fact that we got the beautiful and poetic glimpse that we did is remarkable enough, and I haven't seen anything like it in any other creation story outside of the Bible.

But we dare not dismiss Genesis and specifically the Creation, because of the time in which it was written. For there is something science can't tell us. It cannot tell us who created us, or why, it cannot assign a purpose to our lives, and it cannot determine whether the possibilities it illuminates should or should not be pursued and under what circumstances, beyond simple things such as, "If you throw magnesium in water, it's going to explode." So we've established that said reaction is explosive. That's great, but being explosive in and of itself is a neutral. The appropriateness of actually doing it is an entirely different matter. Now, whether or not to blow up magnesium may seem like a simple thing ("don't do it where people can get hurt" would be a pretty sensible guideline), but if you apply this same principle to more complex matters, it becomes clear that science in and of itself can't tell us whether we should do a thing that we have discovered we could do.

In Genesis (and the rest of the Bible), the identity of our Creator and His reasons for creating, and how we should relate to that Creation are laid bare for us to see and to take into our very beings. We, like Adam, continue to name the phenomena around us, living and nonliving, with greater and greater specificity. But the naming and the understanding, even the direct observation--just as it was when Adam was the first to speak names for the animals around him--does nothing to diminish the fact that these things are miracles. We have eyes to see nature as never before...if only we would observe it in all of its facets, with our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our souls--and recognize the signature and the reflection of God imbued in every inch of it.

This is, and will always be, a miracle.

To take the name of the Lord in vain...

"You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." --Exodus 20:7

What do you think of when you hear this commandment? Do you think of its colloquial statement (drawn from the King James Version), "Don't take the Lord's name in vain"?

What are you used to thinking of, when you think about what this commandment means? Do you think of the swearing of oaths using God's name? Do you think of avoiding God's name in speech altogether or only under specific circumstances? Do you think of certain curse words that place God's name in a vulgar context?

Caution in our speech in this manner can be a good thing if it also schools us towards caution in our thoughts and our hearts. That said, there is, of course, the temptation--as there is with all commandments and precepts--to take the law only in this sense: that if we don't use God's name in oaths, or we don't mention Him in expressions such as "Oh my God," or whatever may be appropriate to our culture or denomination, then we're doing all we need to do.

I would like to suggest that there's far more to it than literally suggesting when we may or may not use the word "God." What about when we try to claim God as our justification for our own selfish and hateful acts? What happens when we use God, for instance, as an excuse to belittle people, to cheat them, or even to commit acts of violence? I'm not looking at just the "obvious" abuses that we see in the history books--I'm talking about even the simple things, treating those with different beliefs inside and outside of our faith, with the sort of coolness we would not think of doling out to those who are more like ourselves. If we do these sorts of things and then claim God wants us to do that, what we are doing is ascribing to Him a false motive...our own sinful motive, that is.

In essence, what we have committed is defamation of character against our Lord, by the "witness" of our words and actions.

Caution with our choice of words is a good thing--but if we become legalistically fixated on only the use of this phrase or that, we, like the Pharisees before us, may risk missing the real elephant in the room, and the spirit within us that this commandment was intended to root out.

"Call Me Unto Heaven" accepted for publication!

Great news--my short story, "Call Me Unto Heaven," has been accepted for publication in the Infradead anthology, scheduled at this time to be published in October of 2010 by Sam's Dot Publishing, of Memphis. It was written in response to a challenge to portray the demise of the human race.

This is my first professional sale! I am very grateful to editor Tyree Campbell for taking the time to read it, and for accepting it, and also to H. David Blalock for extending the invitation to submit an entry.

I'll keep you up to date with the final publication date and ordering information as they come available.