The intolerable compliment

[Largely plagiarized summary of select portions of the third chapter of C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain.]

How can we define the goodness of God? One one hand, his ways are higher than ours, and what we call good might be bad, and vice versa. On the other hand, our concept of good must not be entirely off.

“If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’, we shall obey, if at all, only through fear–and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity–when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing–may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.”

The fascinating middle ground is that, although we have an imperfect understanding of God’s good, it is not ever confused with bad. In fact, men are (many of them) in a process of gradually discovering good, and as they do, they know immediately that the new law they encounter is good and real, and they feel a sense of guilt at not complying to it. The example is of an adopted child pulled off the streets, who gradually learns his manners, but recognizes them as superior to his former ways, with the humble sense that he has “blundered into society he is unfit for.” In this sense, God’s goodness is different that ours, but as the Platonic form differs from the physical object, or as a child’s scribbled circle differs from the perfect circle he has in his head. Even in the discrepancy, the superior standard is affirmed.

So how can we describe good in the ultimate, divine, “ideal” sense? When we say God is good, we mean that he is loving, and that is true. But by saying that he is loving, we mean he is “kind” and that he wants our happiness at all cost, like a benevolent and somewhat senile grandfather. And that is a poor definition of love. Kindness is not good when separated from the other virtues. “It consents very readily to the removal of its object” (e.g. the euthanasia of an animal). Furthermore, parents who are so kind to their children that they will not cause them pain raise the worst brats and in spoiling them, ruin their character. There is more to love than kindness. So what is God’s love like, then?

We are given in Scripture various modes, of varying analogous depth, which capture aspects of the unfathomable depths of God’s love for us, and thus his goodness as we may know it.

Artist and artifact
We are God’s workmanship. The sculptor or painter who loves his masterpiece, his life’s work, works with it, and will not be satisfied until it has achieved a certain character. In a sense, God is likewise not content with us until we have achieved a certain character.

Man and beast
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. The owner of a dog tames the dog primarily for his own sake, that he may love it (not that the dog may love him); yet, the man’s interests in the dog are the dog’s best interests. The man is not content with a mangy, smelly, unruly mutt – he trains the dog’s behavior and cleans it to make it more lovable. Although to the dog, this process would seem quite unagreeable, the tamed dog achieves the healthiest, longest life, with the most comforts, and the noblest sense of self and loyalty. (In vague analogy, borrowing from the end of the book, a dog truly lives in his master as we truly live in God – reaching our potential and purpose when rightly submitted to our master.)

Father and son
God is our father, and we his children. This symbol means essentially an authoritative love on one side, with an obedient love on the other. Familial affection is mixed with a sense of submission, duty, which produces a relationship engendering a strong sense of honor and rightness in most men, when it is observed among them.

“The father uses his authority to make the son into the sort of human being he, rightly, and in his superior wisdom, wants him to be. Even in our own days, though a man might say it, he cold mean nothing by saying, “I love my son but don’t care how great a blackguard he is provided he has a good time.”

Man and woman
We are the bride of Christ. In this symbol we see that true love demands the perfecting of its object.

When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul/ Do we not rather then first begin to care? Does any woman regard it as a sign of love in a man that he neither knows nor cares how she is looking? Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

God’s love contains the kernels of all these earthly loves, and far surpasses them. Ultimately, God loves us more than we want to be loved. We would like a mild, emasculated, wimpy bit of love, love that either made us the center of everything, or else left us alone. But a look at the world can see that this is a contemptible perversion of love – witnessed either in those who are too fearful and self-centered to love courageously, or those that excessively dote upon the object of their love. I am afraid God loves us more truly and fervently than we would like.

When Christianity says that god loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some ‘disinterested’ because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in aweful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. the great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect’, is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artists’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.

God loves us more than we would like. Praise be to Him.

“Divine freedom”

Perhaps this is not the “best of all possible” universes, but the only possible one. Possible worlds can mean only “worlds that God could have made, but didn’t.” The idea of that which God “could have” done involves a too anthropomorphic conception of God’s freedom. Whatever human freedom means, Divine freedom cannot mean indeterminacy between alternatives and choice of one of them. Perfect goodness can never debate about the end to be obtained, and perfect wisdom cannot debate about the means most suited to achieve it. The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them–that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own omnipotence the air in which they all flower (Excerpt from C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, second chapter).

“I am that I am” (Ex 3:14).

“See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me” (Deut. 32:39).

Not only is there no other god beside him; there is also no other possible universe beside that which he rules, no other possible existence beyond him, no other meaning of good. He is what is.

The inevitable possibility of bad choice

[Largely plagiarized summary of select portions of the second chapter of C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain.]

If you say “God can create a creature with free will and at the same time withhold free will from it” you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, “God can.”

Intrinsic impossibility
“In ordinary usage the word impossible generally implies a suppressed clause beginning with the word unless.” For example, it is impossible for Johnny to win [unless Mark, Brian and Tony are all disqualified]. However, there are some kinds of impossibility that are intrinsically self-contradictory, and are thus absolutely impossible. That is, the sentence has no qualifying clause, and is impossible in all worlds under all conditions for all agents. For example, “That square box is round.” The only way this could be true is if the nature of space were different from that we currently experience; but such a condition is entirely outside the realm of scientific speculation.

The omnipotence of God does not mean that he can do the intrinsically impossible. “You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense.” The old question “Can God make a rock that is too heavy for him to lift” is mere wordplay. “It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities.”

What comes with our self-identity
Any attempt to remove from the existence of free beings the possibility of bad choice is intrinsically impossible in the sense above.

I cannot be me (or at least be self-conscious) unless I perceive myself in contrast to non-me (e.g. you). If we had at all times identical thoughts, passions, and choices, then how might I comprehend my individuality apart from you?

If we are able to perceive each other, to have a mutually conscious co-relation between our beings, then we must exist in an environment which enables a contrast between us. “The minimum condition of self-consciousness and freedom would be that the creature should apprehend God and, therefore, itself as distinct from God.”

This environment which enables yours and my mutual perception and relationship must be objective, that is, of a fixed nature and distinct from either of us. If, as the existentialist says, I create reality, then you don’t really exist; you are a mere character in the play which I am writing. Similarly, if we both exist, but the environment is entirely in my control, then you would be quite incapable of communicating with me or making your presence known to me, because you would be unable to manipulate matter, i.e., the means of communication between our selves. I would be animate, but you would be trapped inside a manequin. Therefore, two souls must meet in a world that is objective and “fixed”, that is, not entirely subject to my will or yours.

Now, if we are truly agents of choice created to choose, or relational beings created to relate to God, and if choice or relationship requires an objective medium through which two beings interact, then the ability to choose that which is not God, comes as part and parcel, quite unavoidably.

Now, could God have created a world in which all our bad choices would have been obviated and all bad consequences evaporated immediately? Well, if we could abstract this scenario, we would find our choice, our identity, our very selves, to be quite stripped away. If only one of our options would actually have a result, and the other action would have its effects slurped up by divine benevolence, then we would really only have one truly option. The right to choose includes the right to have the results of your choice. It seems God is not interested in pandering us as little children; he gives us, Lewis says in another chapter, the “intolerable compliment” of a world that allows the effects of our choices to play out without his (direct) interference.

So we conclude simply this, that our mere existence as free, self-conscious individuals contains within it, naturally and inseparably, the possibility of bad choices. This seems to be simply “how things are,” woven into the fabric of the universe in which our minds can operate. There are no alternative “ways it could have been.”

This train of thought – the inexorable existence of the possibility of bad choice in the world, and its seeming inevitability – brings us to question why God decreed that we would be such dreadfully free creatures (us). We thus take a step up from questioning the omnipotence of God, to engage the more challenging and intriguing question of his goodness.

Three strands in all religions (and the one with a fourth)

[Largely plagiarized summary of select portions of the first chapter of C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain.]

“In all developed religion we find three strands, and in Christianity one more.”

The first strand is the numinous, or, that thing which produces a sense of awe of the supernatural. Man has believed in “spirits” as far back as history goes. The numinous can be imagined if I told you that there was a ghost in the next room. You would perhaps experience fear at that moment. Now, if I told you that there was a “mighty spirit” in the next room, your feeling would be fear, flavored more like awe and reverence. The source of that emotion is the numinous.

The second strand is a sense of moral obligation, or, that which produces the sense behind the feeling I ought not do that. Although the specific mores of cultures may differ, they have basic commonalities, and more interestingly, they share the attributes of being affirmed by the members of that culture and yet not being adhered to by members of that culture. They are unattested archetypes, like the “perfect body” of fashion. This sense cannot be inferred from the facts of our physical experience, and is either revelation or inexplicable illusion.

The third strand is the linking and identification of the numinous with the sense of moral obligation. Although to do so is quite natural among religions, it is not obvious why it should need to be so. It is certainly not desirable for natural man, for the power which condemns him to be “armed with the power of the numinous.” Many cultures have rejected this union, producing either immoral religion, or nonreligious morality.

Perhaps only one race of people, the Jews, made this connection perfectly; but great individuals in all times and places have made it also, and only those who take it are safe from the obscenities and barbarities of unmoralized worship or the cold, sad self-righteousness of sheer moralism….And though logic does no compel us to take it, it is very hard to resist–even on Paganism and Pantheism morality is always breaking in, and even Stoicism finds itself willy-nilly bowing the knee to God. Once more, it may be madness–a madness congenital to man and oddly fortunate in its results–or it may be revelation. And if revelation, then it is most really and truly in Abraham that all people shall be blessed, for it was the Jews who fully and unambiguously identified the awful Presence haunting black mountain-tops and thunderclouds with ‘the righteous Lord’ who ‘loveth righteousness’.

The fourth strand is one possessed only by Christianity.

There was a man born among these Jews who claimed to be, or to be the son of, or to be ‘one with’, the Something which is at once the awful haunter of nature and the giver of the moral law.

This claim has not been made by any other religious leader. Buddha, Krishna (as he teaches in the Bhagavad Gita) and Eckhart Tolle claim to be part of an omni-deity along with everyone and everything else, not ultimately different in essence but different in form. But they do not claim in the same sense that Jesus did, namely, “I am part of the supreme divine essence, and you are not. I am wholly other from you, I am creator, and you are creature. I am the supernatural, being above the natural, and I am the law giver, being the ultimate authority of measure.” That’s the kind of language you find inevitably implied in Jesus’ teachings, and it is almost crazy. Either you believe that he was a lunatic or a fiend, or that he was indeed the incarnation of God.

This last point is what distinguishes Christianity from every other religion and at once makes it unique, extravagantly presumptuous, dangerous, mysterious, and fascinating. All religions are men describing how to get to divine enlightenment; but Christianity says that divine enlightenment Himself showed up among us, walking the dirty streets of an old Jewish town, to make with his own hands and by his own blood the only way to himself.

Public and private empowerment

Elijah prayed boldly to the Lord that He would answer, devour the offering on the altar, and prove himself God. “Let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and I have done all these things at Your word.” God answered. Fire consumed the bull. Elijah commanded that the 450 prophets of Baal be seized and executed in the plain below.

The next thing we hear, Elijah is terrified of the ruthless queen Jezebel and is fleeing for his life. He wishes to die to be put out of his misery. He’s burnt out, and he’s cynical because he’s the only prophet left (a fact he had mentioned with charisma in front of the altars). And there again, God answered, causing raisin cakes to appear, which sustained his 40-day journey to Horeb, the Mountain of God. At Horeb God appeared to Elijah as a still, small voice, giving him hope. He tells him of the next king, a king who will restore justice, and of the prophet who will succeed him, Elisha. God tells him that there is hope, for he has reserved a remnant that have not bowed to Baal.

Praise be to God, because he empowers us both in times of public ministry and power, and in times of personal emptiness, exhaustion, and depression. He answers in the times of bold proclamation, with fire, and when we’re slumped down in the middle of a wilderness, with raisin cakes. He strengthens not only the ministry, but also the personal heart, of those who do his work. Thank you Lord.

Holy extrapolation

Psalm 77 is the story of a troubled man’s lament. He questions whether God has permanently forsaken him, languishing on his bed. For 10 verses he speaks depression, until, at last, the rhetorical questions give way to a declaration of remembrance. “I shall remember the deeds of the Lord.” He proclaims, to himself, the mysterious ways of God, and yet how in those inscrutable ways, He has been faithful to Israel.

“Your way was in the sea, and your paths in the mighty waters, and your footsteps may not be known. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

May l have such faith, when there is no present deliverance to speak of, to extrapolate from the countless and constant faithfulnesses of God in situations where I have been similarly troubled, and declare the goodness of God, to his glory.

Jeroboam’s son and “the age of accountability”

Arise therefore, go to your house. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the LORD, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.

In 1 Kings 14, Jeroboam’s wife inquires of the prophet Abijah about the fate of her ill son. God tells her that he’s going to destroy Jeroboam’s entire bloodline, and that the child will die a natural death because God sees something in him that’s better than the rest of the line, that’s worth sparing.

What’s interesting here is that, as far as we can tell, this child might be younger than the “age of accountability” – the hebrew is yeled which simply means child, son, boy, offspring, or youth. The Lord saw virtue of some sort in even a young lad.

A child’s character begins to show early. There is something in us other than what our environment has formed there. There are some with inexplicably good hearts, whose disposition seems remarkably different from those who have grown up under the same circumstances. Maybe the “age of accountability” is too contrived; perhaps accountability is a gradient.

This passage seems to indicate that even in a child, there is a kernel of character, of self, strong enough to be regarded by God. An interesting thought.

Paradoxes Part 2: The Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil, as a Syllogism:
Premise 1: The Christian God is both infinitely good and omnipotent.
Premise 2: Bad exists.
Therefore: The Christian God cannot exist.

We can argue against either of these two premises in order to neutralize the argument.

What is the difference between doing and ordaining?
For we say that God ordained, or divinely decreed, evil (and he must have) yet God cannot cause or do evil, nor even tempt one to evil.

In defense of small government

I don’t usually talk about government and politics. However, I’ll venture there today with a claim: Small, limited government is essential to liberty. Why? I suggest that it is the embodiment of the best option out of the following three.

Some of us rule
We all rule
None of us rules

Option 1. Some of us rule (totalitarianism, monarchy etc. )
The undesirability of this option needs little explanation to our society, drenched as we are in the language of equality and tolerance. Out of “some of us rule” comes order, but also the undesirable stratification of society into classes, slave-owner relationships, and general oppression/suppression.

Option 2. We all rule (communism, pure democracy etc.)
These systems are the best option in a world where man is fundamentally a generous and others-centered creature. But alas, he is not. The masses cannot and will not rule themselves – leaders will coalesce. “We all rule” works for a little while, but all too quickly slides, as if on a smooth inclined plane, down into “Some of us rule.” A system that relies on man voluntarily helping his neighbor for the “common good” ends in the domination of those who have the responsibility of defining and managing this common good.

My Chinese classmate tells me that even the high communist language of China has beneath it today the unquestioned rule of the ~80 million members of the “party” over the many other millions who dare not disagree with them. No one is content, he tells me, but no one dares say so.

Big Brother always gets too big for his britches. That is not liberty.

Option 3. None of us rules (constitutional republic)
The only satisfactory conclusion is really one of stalemate: the only way to maintain our liberties is if nobody gets the reins all to themselves.Why? Basic premise of human nature: Man is primarily motivated by his own self-interest. Thus the ideal government is one in which checks and balances distribute power in such a way that every person and group’s self-interest checks the self-interest of every other group. This is the only way to keep certain groups from gradually accumulating and wielding power over other groups. Man’s selfishness can play off itself and keep everything relatively fair. (I’m not good at holding myself accountable, but I’m quite good at holding you accountable.)

Checks and balances

It’s the basic idea behind capitalism, too: The best way to get everyone to be productive is to let him reap the benefits of his work, because men are interested primarily in their own benefit. If a man sees he can get benefits without working (e.g. welfare) or that working more than a certain level will not bring additional benefit (e.g. taxation of income over a given cap), his productivity will decrease.

The U.S. was remarkable in being the first country to achieve this. However, having become quite fat in our abundance, and we are in danger of forgetting the value and price of this liberty. Compare the cycle of a civilization, attributed to Alexander Tyler:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.

I’d say we’re cresting the hill of complacency now, into the yawning abyss of apathy. Apathy says, “Okay, Mr. Leader, you just go ahead and take care of everything. You got this.” Pretty soon, we become dependent on Mr. Leader, and we forget how to manage our own liberties. He who cannot lead himself quickly becomes bound to the one who can.

A none-of-us-rules government would be a small government that interfered minimally in the functions of society. It would uphold the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and operate within their borders. It would keep the onus of exercising liberty, with its rights and responsibilities, on the American people themselves, instead of assuming it. Ultimately, it says to the apathetic American, “I will not rule you, you must rule yourself. Come, pick yourself up, remember your liberty! I will not do it for you.”

Do we the people want to govern ourselves or to be governed? If we claim our rights, the government will yet give them to us; but if we do nothing, there is coming a day when it may be too late.

A philosophy of marriage

“If two people love each other and are committed to each other, then why do they have to be formally married?

I am getting married. Why have I chosen to do this?

I would see no reason why my chosen path were better than a personal, heartfelt commitment, if I did not believe certain presuppositions, namely: (1) Marriage is a spiritual union over which God has agency and authority. (2) The church exercises this authority. (3) Marriage is also a function of the culture/community.

First, if marriage is nothing but a social contract between two consenting adults, then indeed God or the church has no right to meddle. But I think marriage is something more. Jesus’ teaching on marriage is centered around his discourse with the Pharisees, as recorded in Matthew 19.

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Jesus presupposes here that when marriage happens, God fuses the two people together with a “divine welding device.” When two people are married, their commitment to each other is only one aspect of what happens. They do not only join themselves — God also joins them. There is a spiritual significance and sacredness to being married. It is not “being official” like two people dating.

I’m not entirely sure what this means for people who have consummated their love before being married. Have they already been “married in the eyes of God”, as some put it? I think this might be true. The Mosaic law is interesting: the remedy for a rape scandal was for the man to marry the girl. On an personal aspect, I have been told by people close to me that a little piece of one’s soul is left with every person he/she has been intimate with. In contrast, I suppose there can be no union sweeter than that of two virgins, who can give each other their whole and unadulterated affection. The point is simply this: God acts in marriage to bind together two souls, and because of this divine action, marriage is sacred.

“Why would they need to be married by the church?”

At this point in our philosophy, a monogamous yet not officially married couple would be perfectly fine. I am getting officially married by an ordained pastor (although not physically in my church). Why have I chosen this, not as optional but as essential?

The first premise is simply that, since marriage is sacred, I desire to receive God’s blessing. I can think of no better example than in Braveheart. After William Wallace has secretly married Murron and she has been killed by the English because of it, he approaches her father at her funeral and kneels, head low, before him. The man, who had never given blessing of the marriage, extends his hand, trembling. He almost withdraws it, but finally, with a release of spirit, places it on William’s head. What he gave William there was his blessing on the marriage, and with it his forgiveness for the tragedy. The bittersweetness we feel in that scene is derived from the value of paternal blessing and sanction of marriage–a sanction most important to receive from our heavenly father.

The answer to why the church has to sanction marriage is that the church has been instituted by God with the authority and responsibility to vicariously administer his divine blessing on marriage. I do not believe that God’s authority is in any way limited to the channel of the church, but his people are called the Body of Christ, and God has chosen to work in the world through us (both an honor and a weight). We are given the image of servants managing the assets of the master until his return. A young lad could not easily say that he was serving the master in his absence while evading and undermining the trusted servant whom the master had given charge. Therefore, acknowledging God’s preferred means of communicating his blessing, is essential for those seeking the blessing of God to seek the blessing of the church, unless they are in such a place where there is no church (as in certain Middle Eastern countries, for instance).

I will add a note of comparatively less importance, about why it is fitting to have family and friends at a wedding, or at least, as has been the traditional bottom-line, witnesses. Inasmuch as marriage is primarily an institution given by God, it is also a function of culture, community, and clan. The idea that, having risen to adulthood, two individuals are entirely independent of their relatives, is quite a western idea. Many cultures in the world think of everyone as connected; they see themselves not as individuals, but as inextricable representatives and members of their families and communities–and I think there is some truth to that. My fiancee has said, “You know, when we get married, you’ll be a Gorenflo [her mother’s side].” I have acquiesced. Try as you might, you marry a family, not just an individual. Especially in the wedding ceremony, there is a process of “leaving” as well as “cleaving,” and it seems sad to ignore the sacrifice of the parents in giving their child away to form another family unit, focusing only on the new family unit. I imagine I would want a better sense of closure if I never attended the wedding of my daughter–if I could never take her down the isle, look her man in the face with an eye of understanding and trust, and dance with her one final time. As much as a wedding is essentially about the bride and groom, it is not just about them. No couple is an island.

So that’s why I’m getting married the way I am, as far as I can think of it right now. I’d love dialog on this–comment or email me if you like.