Prelude to a Larger Post: Oswald Chambers on the Whole and the Particulars

From the December 9th entry of Still Higher for His Highest:

If you take all the manifestations of God given in the Old Testament you find them a mass of contradiction--now God is pictured as a Man, now as a Woman, now as a lonely Hero, now as a suffering Servant--and until we come to the New Testament these conflicting characteristics but add confusion to our conception of God. But immediately we see Jesus Christ, we find all the apparent contradictions blended in one unique Personality.

Oswald is here hinting on a point that I hope to expand on in the very near future. One of the objections that our post-modern world has against absolute truth is that if there really was an essential, absolute reality to things, then things would be simpler. As it is, the presence of complications and complexities negate the possibility of any such essential, absolute reality. The particulars are too vast for any whole to encompass them (I dealt with a similar issue last year).

The big mistake that Christianity (esp. Emergent Christianity) has done in response to this claim is to agree with it and then try to maintain (re: redefine) the Christian Faith in the midst of it. I'm telling you right now, it cannot be done: essential, absolute realities are absolutely essential for Christianity to be Christianity. Take those away, and Christianity goes away as well. What is left in such a situation is slightly moral, incredibly trendy, and boasting a "Christian" veneer. It is not, however, the Christian Faith whereby men can be saved.

What Oswald points out (and what I plan to greatly expand on later) is the groundwork for a truly Christian response to the post-modern objection. That response is this assertion: Complexity and "apparent contradictions" amongst the particulars do not necessarily negate the presence of an essential and absolute whole. This is because the whole is great enough to encompass all the myriad of particulars into itself. The error that modern/post-modern types make is assuming that the essential, absolute realities or qualities are necessarily simple. I believe the proper Christian response is to assert that they are not simple; rather, they are infinite. The essential whole is just as vast (if not more so) than the various particulars.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2009

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 Truth About Truth (or, Fighting for Virginity)

To say that modern man has lost any true desire for truth is more of an over-simplification than an understatement. Read any popular magazine, newspaper, or blog article, and you will find this or that party or group clamoring for “the truth” or “the facts” of the matter or issue currently in fashion. Much to the chagrin of post-modern sentimentalist (from religious emergents to political pundits), the average person still wants the truth and nothing but the truth. As Chesterton put it, they want to close their minds on something solid. This, of course, is a characteristic common to all of mankind, though recently we have done our very best to hide it. As much as stuffy academics and snobby coastal elitist speak to the contrary, the truth is that we still believe in truth, a fact easily verifiable at every drive-thru, playground, or family reunion across the globe. Thus, it is a bit over-simplistic to say that modern man has lost a desire for truth, as though to say that they are fundamentally illogical and irrational, when the truth is that all humans are fundamentally (though incompletely) logical and rational. The deeper reality of this issue is not that we do not desire truth per se, but rather that we desire truth to be ultimately unobtrusive to ourselves, to be uncomplicated and tidy. We want the truth, but we also want the truth to be simple; and as Mr. Wilde once said, the truth is never simple.

An example is in order, and it must be a rather frank one so that I may have your attention. There is a slogan I saw recently, plastered across some demonstrator’s sign like typical asinine bumper-sticker philosophies, that said, “Fighting for Peace is like F—king for Virginity.” Of course, the unidentified demonstrator did not edit any of his obscenities, but I have; I want to capture your attention, not drive it away. I find this slogan to be a bit odd, precisely because it seems to make sense on the surface but is utterly absurd reasoning when one actually thinks about it. It looks simple enough: it is a comparison of opposites in a causal relationship; “fighting” cannot lead to “peace” anymore than sex can lead to virginity (though Donne may like to argue that latter point) because both sets contain opposites. So far, this is all smooth sailing, or so we initially think.

Thinking, however, is a dangerous business, and whether it is domesticated or left wild, it can pull down strongholds all the same. For example, when one actually thinks through the slogan for a moment, it seems that those who claim that you cannot fight for peace understand neither peace nor fighting. Fighting, in its proper sense, is not primarily destructive; it is primarily preservative in that it fights against that which is destructive. This is common sense: a man fights for his home or wife and children, not for the burglar that has broken down his door; it is the burglar that he fights against. Of course there are exceptions, but this is the rule: fighting strives to maintain what the fighter views as good, right, and proper. Likewise, peace, in its proper sense, is not the absence of conflict; in truth, it is not an absence at all. It is a presence, a presence of justice and wisdom and virtue, etc.; in short, it is the presence of all things commonly held as good, right, and proper. I am quite sure that a mere glance at any brutal despotism in history will easily yield times that contained what can be called an “absence of conflict,” but it most assuredly had no peace, because that which is good, right, and proper had been suppressed or outright removed (sometimes, ironically, in the name of peace!). European appeasement of Nazi Germany certainly created an “absence of conflict,” but not peace. An “absence of conflict” is more often a sign of passivity than peace.

Thus, if we view “fighting” as the maintenance of that which is good, right, and proper against that which would destroy it, and if we view “peace” as the presence of that which is good, right, and proper, then there is no reason to believe that one cannot “fight for peace.” To say otherwise is like someone saying that St. George cannot slay the dragon in order to save the princess because princess rescuing and dragon slaying are somehow opposite, which is an obviously absurd statement. In fact, take the earlier mentioned slogan, replace the phrase “Fighting for Peace” with “Slaying Dragons for the Princess,” read it again, and you will see how absurd the slogan really is. Of course you can fight for peace; like a princess, it is perhaps the only thing worth fighting for.

That the truth can maintain the intimate bond between “fighting” and “peace” succinctly demonstrates modern man’s problem in regards to the truth: we want it to be not only logical and rational but also manageable and simple. We want it to be plastered across signs and bumper-stickers and metas rather than charted in a book or spiritedly debated over drinks and cigars for days and weeks. From The Daily Show to The O’Reilly Factor, we prefer our discussions in bit-sized chunks, as though we seriously believe that anything substantial could be meted out in five to ten minute intervals. In addition, when we actually do begin to delve into the inky black depths of truth, we are shocked and awed that it is highly complex, even paradoxical (as with “fighting” and “peace”). The truth more often than not frustrates us because it not only wants to have its cake and eat it, but also seems to succeed in that very endeavor.

In short, I said earlier that any disparaging statements about modern man's desire for truth are merely over-simplifications; and they are over-simplifications precisely because the modern world’s notion of what “truth” is is overly simple, some would even say naïve, like a child thinking it can capture The Divine Comedy in a nursery rhyme. If we are to have any truly substantial dialogues about truth that get us anywhere anymore, we must put away our naiveté, tear down our protest signs and bumper-stickers (like modern iconoclasts), and return to the dangerous business of actual thinking (preferably with other people over drinks and cigars) while realizing that the truth is ultimately mysterious in that it is often hidden and always meant to surprise.

-Jon Vowell