A Pertinent Question

There is a story in the Gospels (I forget which) where Jesus heals a man that has been lingering next to a pool of water for some thirty years. The water was supposedly disturbed every once and a while when an angel came and touched it, and the first person to bath themselves in the water after it was disturbed would be healed of their ailments. The man in question was a paralytic, however, and had no one to take him to the pool. So he sat unmoved for around thirty years.

When Jesus found him, his first question He asked him was, "What do you want?" I believe it was John Eldridge who pointed out that this is an astounding question. It seemed that Jesus' first step in healing the man was to get him to reestablish what his desire was, his goal, his end game, for sitting near the pool. It is not unreasonable to assume that, after having sat still without success for around thirty years, that he had eventually forgotten what was the point of it all.

I believe that Jesus' question to the paralytic is highly pertinent to our current culture and society that has been terribly paralyzed by the grip of post-modernism. We would do well to ask people, both liberal and conservative, atheistic and spiritual, secular and religious, what it is exactly that they want. When faced with the tumultuous lot of faddist and trivial institutions, ideologies, parties, minority groups, voting blocks, revolutions, moralities, and philosophies that our current culture and society parades around like next year's fashion, perhaps the best question that we can put forth is, "What's the point?"

I recently read an article in the August edition of Chronicles, a monthly mag that I don't always agree with but I still heartily recommend, and found its author (Thomas Flemming, the mag's editor) implicitly agreeing with Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World, where Mr. Chesterton states in the first chapter that what is wrong is that "nobody knows what is right," i.e., no one has an ideal, an end game, a goal, a purpose that their energies are aiming for. As Mr. Flemming stresses, we would do well to ask "what's the good of" all the scared cows and beloved dogmas of the current trend-setters and socio-political philosophers.

Of course, if this question is posed, people on every side of multiple different fences will fire back with culturally approved buzz words like "growth" or "prosperity" or "equality" or "liberty" or "freedom" or whatnot. These words, however, do not solve the problem; they only push it further and reveal a peculiar ignorance (and subsequent arrogance) of our time, viz., that the things that those words signify are goods in and of themselves. Thus, if we ask someone, "What's the good of growth, etc?" they will probably have no answer, other than that those things are good, which they are not.

That last statement may seem odd (maybe even blasphemous), but it should be an obvious truth. Those things are not goods unto themselves; they are goods only in regards to their ability to secure another good. In other words, they are means, not ends. "Prosperity" and "liberty" are meant to achieve something other than themselves. What exactly is the identity of that "other" thing is up for debate; the point here is that no one even debates it precisely because they view the means as ends and thus can see nothing beyond them. The result is that we have a slew of methods, but no ideal to apply them to; we have more than enough tools, but nothing to build.

Growth, prosperity, etc. must have an ideal that sets their energy and movements within a proper context. Left to themselves, they hopelessly degrade into all manner of evils that have and will continue to plague mankind from one end of history to another. So "growth," left to itself, becomes greed. "Prosperity" becomes decadence and apathy. "Equality" becomes conformity and tyranny. "Liberty" becomes licence. "Freedom" becomes anarchy. Set outside of a clear-cut goal and guidelines, these things run wild, and cause massive damage after creating pleasure for a season.

The next time the gurus of the modern/post-modern dark ages, both inside and outside the Church, come to us whispering sweet nothings, it would be wise of us to check our itching ears at the door and instead ask them what exactly is going on? What's the point? What's the good of it? What's your goal, your aim, your ideal? "What do you want?" said Christ. We would do well to ask the same question. Even if the ideas presented to us (after much tiresome digging) are not at all what we would call ideal, at least then we have something with which to wrestle with and talk about. Until then, this society will continue to go nowhere at all as it has no ideal or goal, only pleasant feelings in the pit of their stomachs over wonderful soundbites and bumper-sticker slogans.

-Jon Vowell

The Return of a Pet Peeve

Early on in this blog's life, a reoccuring theme of mine was the devestating effects that removing the doctrine of Sin have on the gospel. Past examples of my concerns can be found here and here.
One of my fellow bloggers reignited my interest in the subject (if only for a moment) by posting this excellent article on his blog. I recommend reading his entry entitled "Smart Baptist" (which contains a link to the article).
In times like these (when the gospel is turned into a cloak for political or consumerism agendas), I like to read more G.K. Chesterton (a Catholic) and Oswald Chambers (a Protestant) because both of these men firmly point to the fundamental reality of Sin and the fundamental reality of Redemption (and to the fact that without a proper view of the fundamental reality of Sin, there is no proper view of the fundamental reality of Redemption).

Enough Foolishness

I would like to make a statement.
There is much frustrating and foolish drivel that passes for wisdom these days, and I would like to address one of them. What I wish to address is the commonly hailed pseudo-axiom: "Christianity (sometimes religion in general) is for the weak." By "weak," proponents of this foolishness do not mean what our Lord said: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19:10) In other words, by "weak" they do not mean that Christianity leads to the one who takes the broken and heals them. If that was the case, then there is no harm or foul. However, this is not what that statement (or its proponents) means by "weak." What it means is more in keeping with Marx's "opiate of the masses," i.e., a mellowing agent meant to suppress people's fears and allow them to get on with life. People who need Christianity are like crackheads--they need it because they do not want to deal with reality. Therefore, "weak" means those who are self-delusional about life because they just can't or won't face real life, with all its trials and trifles.
The bite of this critique of Christianity (and religion) is that, like most exaggerations, it is not completely unfounded. There are, sad to say, naive, well-meaning idiots out there whose idea of religion is to cloister themselves away from all the evil and sufferings of life, acting like everything is absolutely dandy when everything is absolutely not. We all know such people, and feel a strange mixture of pity and abhorrence in their presence.
However, the fact that such people exist does not actually prove anything about Christianity itself. In fact, it actually proves something about those kinds of people, namely that they are well-meaning, naive, and idiots. Their abuse of Christianity and its doctrines says more about their character than that of Christianity's. Shouldn't that be obvious, though? The abuse of a thing does not prove that the thing itself is evil. Fire has been used for both warming and war, for comfort and cruelty, but only a fool would say that fire is evil and not the people who abuse it. So too, with Christendom. Crusades, Inquisitions, miscellaneous wars and power struggles prove that it can be abused, but it has not proven that it itself is evil (or false, or anything else) but only that people are evil. Thus, the exaggerated pseudo-axiom proves nothing except that there really are weaklings in the world, and sometimes they are religious weaklings.
Christianity itself (weaklings aside) flies right in the face of such nonsensical blather, and this part I want to say very deliberately: Any weak-minded jellyfish of a fool can look at the world and depressingly note (with nauseating obviousness) that evil is real, and that we should just live with it. Only the truly brave and strong, those burning with the fiery Spirit of God Almighty, dare have the audacity to stare plain-faced and open-eyed into that sprawling abyss that is the presence of evil and suffering, and defiantly proclaim, "Yes, you are real; but you are not the end."
That, of course, is the essence of what Christendom has called faith. It is not a trusting while being in ignorance of the facts; it is a trusting in spite of the facts. Better yet, it is trusting in a Fact that transcends all facts, and that Fact is God and His good will. Christians (if they are real) are not willfully ignorant of reality, but willfully spiteful of reality in favor of Reality. Alone among all men, they have found the courage and strength to laugh in evil's face and find joy in the midst of tribulation, almost as though they were in revolt against all of reality as it is given, a rebellious crew who will not bow or surrender like a coward beneath the crushing weight of darkness. That is what Christianity has always taught.
Chesterton (in Orthodoxy) put it this way:
"The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial...Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity...Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this way: that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small...Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian."
Christians are not joyful out of ignorance, but out of a completer knowledge of reality. They know more about the nature of things than the lost man, know that which gives unconquerable strength (Romans 8:37). The foolishness of this world would have you believe that the joyful man is a blind man. The inverse is the truth: the man of sorrow is the blind man, unable to see and escape to the unbreakable, never ending joy of the Lord and make its strength his own.

Mr. Chambers and Mr. Chesterton on the Joy of the Lord

The following is from Mr. Chambers' book He Will Glorify Me:

"We have the notion of joy that arises from good spirits or good health, but the miracle of joy of God has nothing to do with our lives or circumstances or the condition we're in. Jesus does not come to us and say, 'Cheer up.' He plants within us the miracle of the joy of God's own nature. The stronghold of the Christian faith is the joy of God, not my joy in God. It is a great thing for one to have faith in the joy of God, to know that nothing alters the fact of God's joy. God reigns and rules and rejoices, and His joy is our strength. The miracle of the Christian life is that God can give a person joy in the midst of external misery, a joy which gives him or her power to work until the misery is removed. Joy is different from happiness, because happiness depends on what happens. There are elements in our circumstances we cannot help; joy is independent of them all."

The following is from Mr. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy:

"The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial...Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this: that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels...There was something that [Christ] hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."

The following is from Mr. Chambers' book The Place of Help:

"The external character of the life of our Lord was that of radiant sociability; so much so that the popular scandal-mongering about Him was that He was 'a glutton and winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' [John 15:11] The fundamental reason for our Lord's sociability was other than they knew; but His whole life was characterized with a radiant fullness, it was not an exhausted type of life. 'Unless you are converted and become as little children...' If a little child is not full of the spontaneity of life, there is something wrong. The bounding life and restlessness is a sign of health, not of naughtiness. Jesus said, 'I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.' Be filled with the life Jesus came to give. People who are radiantly healthy, physically and spiritually, cannot be crushed. They are like the cedars of Lebanon, which have such superabounding vitality in their sap that they intoxicate to death any parasites that try to live on them."

Mr. Chambers and Mr. Chesterton on God's Atheism

The following is from Mr. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy:

"When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist."

The following is from Mr. Chamber's book The Philosophy of Sin:

"The cry of the cross is unfathomable to us. The only ones--and I want to say this very deliberately--the only ones who come near the threshold of understanding the cry of Jesus are not the martyrs; they knew that God had not forsaken them, His presence was so wonderful; not the lonely missionaries who are killed or forsaken, they experience exultant joy, for God is with them when men forsake them. The only ones who come near the threshold of understanding the experience of God-forsakenness are men like Cain, 'My punishment is greater than I can bear,' men like Esau, 'exceedingly great and bitter cry,' men like Judas. Jesus Christ knew and tasted to a fuller depth than any man could ever taste what it is to be separated from God by sin. If Jesus Christ was a martyr, our salvation is a myth. We have followed cunningly devised fables if Jesus Christ is not all that this cry represents Him to be--the Incarnate God becoming identified with sin in order to save men from hell and damnation. The depth of this cry of Jesus is deeper than any man can go because it is a cry from the heart of God. The height and depth of our salvation are only measured by God Almighty on His throne and Jesus Christ in the heart of hell."