“I despise Birth-Control”: G.K. Chesterton on babies and distributism

As he has done time and again since I recently started reading him in earnest, Chesterton comes in and says with a machete what I had been trying to think with a butter-knife for some time.

The following is from The Well and the Shallows and was copied from Ignatius Insight.

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I hope it is not a secret arrogance to say that I do not think I am exceptionally arrogant; or if I were, my religion would prevent me from being proud of my pride. Nevertheless, for those of such a philosophy, there is a very terrible temptation to intellectual pride, in the welter of wordy and worthless philosophies that surround us today. Yet there are not many things that move me to anything like a personal contempt. I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification. I do not feel any contempt for a Bolshevist, who is a man driven to the same negative simplification by a revolt against very positive wrongs. But there is one type of person for whom I feel what I can only call contempt. And that is the popular propagandist of what he or she absurdly describes as Birth-Control.

I despise Birth-Control first because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly word. It is also an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would at first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth. It only makes sure that there shall never be any birth to control. It cannot for instance, determine sex, or even make any selection in the style of the pseudo-science of Eugenics. Normal people can only act so as to produce birth; and these people can only act so as to prevent birth. But these people know perfectly well as I do that the very word Birth-Prevention would strike a chill into the public, the instant it was blazoned on headlines, or proclaimed on platforms, or scattered in advertisements like any other quack medicine. They dare not call it by its name, because its name is very bad advertising. Therefore they use a conventional and unmeaning word, which may make the quack medicine sound more innocuous.

Second, I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing. It is not even a step along the muddy road they call Eugenics; it is a flat refusal to take the first and most obvious step along the road of Eugenics. Once grant that their philosophy is right, and their course of action is obvious; and they dare not take it; they dare not even declare it. If there is no authority in things which Christendom has called moral, because their origins were mystical, then they are clearly free to ignore all the difference between animals and men; and treat men as we treat animals. They need not palter with the stale and timid compromise and convention called Birth-Control. Nobody applies it to the cat. The obvious course for Eugenists is to act towards babies as they act towards kittens. Let all the babies be born; and then let us drown those we do not like. I cannot see any objection to it; except the moral or mystical sort of objection that we advance against Birth-Prevention. And that would be real and even reasonable Eugenics; for we could then select the best, or at least the healthiest, and sacrifice what are called the unfit. By the weak compromise of Birth-Prevention, we are very probably sacrificing the fit and only producing the unfit. The births we prevent may be the births of the best and most beautiful children; those we allow, the weakest or worst. Indeed, it is probable; for the habit discourages the early parentage of young and vigorous people; and lets them put off the experience to later years, mostly from mercenary motives. Until I see a real pioneer and progressive leader coming out with a good, bold, scientific programme for drowning babies, I will not join the movement.

But there is a third reason for my contempt, much deeper and therefore more difficult to express; in which is rooted all my reasons for being anything I am or attempt to be; and above all, for being a Distributist. Perhaps the nearest to a description of it is to say this: that my contempt boils over into bad behaviour when I hear the common suggestion that a birth is avoided because people want to be “free” to go to the cinema or buy a gramophone or a loud-speaker. What makes me want to walk over such people like doormats is that they use the word “free.” By every act of that sort they chain themselves to the most servile and mechanical system yet tolerated by men. The cinema is a machine for unrolling certain regular patterns called pictures; expressing the most vulgar millionaires’ notion of the taste of the most vulgar millions. The gramophone is a machine for recording such tunes as certain shops and other organisations choose to sell. The wireless is better; but even that is marked by the modern mark of all three; the impotence of the receptive party. The amateur cannot challenge the actor; the householder will find it vain to go and shout into the gramophone; the mob cannot pelt the modern speaker, especially when he is a loud-speaker. It is all a central mechanism giving out to men exactly what their masters think they should have.

Now a child is the very sign and sacrament of personal freedom. He is a fresh free will added to the wills of the world; he is something that his parents have freely chosen to produce and which they freely agree to protect. They can feel that any amusement he gives (which is often considerable) really comes from him and from them and from nobody else. He has been born without the intervention of any master or lord. He is a creation and a contribution; he is their own creative contribution to creation. He is also a much more beautiful, wonderful, amusing and astonishing thing than any of the stale stories or jingling jazz tunes turned out by the machines. When men no longer feel that he is so, they have lost the appreciation of primary things, and therefore all sense of proportion about the world. People who prefer the mechanical pleasures, to such a miracle, are jaded and enslaved. They are preferring the very dregs of life to the first fountains of life. They are preferring the last, crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated and exhausted things of our dying Capitalist civilisation, to the reality which is the only rejuvenation of all civilisation. It is they who are hugging the chains of their old slavery; it is the child who is ready for the new world.

Jim Gaffigan is accidentally insightful about weddings

I just watched this clip by Jim Gaffigan talking about weddings. Check out what he says starting at 1:29.

There’s always a grain of truth in humor, and what he says in jest is, I believe, actually quite wonderfully true. You see, every girl is indeed, deep beneath the visible fabric of the world, a princess. That is why the first thing girls pretend to be is princesses. Where did they get that instinct?

Perhaps from some lingering memory that their souls had at their nascence that still whispers in childhood, but fades in adulthood.

Perhaps it really is our destiny to marry a prince and live happily ever after–the destiny of mankind, which is echoed in all our stories and fairytales and myths and legends, all our books and movies and music. And in all our weddings.

Perhaps it is at her wedding that a girl can for one moment taste of the true reality of who she is and was meant to be.

Perhaps magic does exist.

Perhaps we do have a kingdom.

Perhaps all love culminates in a banquet where a kingdom comes together as one.

Perhaps the fantasy of the wedding is a glimpse at reality, and all other moments are covered in a shroud. That is what makes it such a special, treasured, sacred occasion, the day that little girls all dream of. Perhaps there is a wedding that even those whose weddings are lackluster here and whose marriages end in tragedy are invited to, in which we all will be the Bride of a Prince.

As G.K. Chesterton says in Orthodoxy:

“Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.”

A few thoughts on Ferguson, MO

This is about the shooting of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson in August and the subsequent racial protests that have culminated in arson, vandalism and riots after a grand jury decided Monday not to indict Wilson.

It is unfortunate that race is still a divisive issue in America. It’s certainly getting better but I suppose we’ll never be totally free of it. It seems like a part of the human condition that we hate and blame the other. There seem to be two ways forward.

A) the enforcement of anti-racist racial profiling

B) the presence of divine love

A desire for Option A is entailed by objections leveled at the statistical disparity between law enforcement race and resident race in Ferguson. The solution that is implied is that the law enforcement recruitment should conform to the racial ratios of its jurisdictions. The only way to achieve this would be to racially screen and select the hiring of police officers, which is a blatant form of racial profiling that ironically contradicts the ideals that it is supposed to support. Police, just like teachers, doctors, and supermarket clerks, should be hired without discrimination on the basis of race.

The sad irony is that both the anorexic and the glutton err in the way of food. Both the haughty man and the self-abasing man sin err in the way of pride. Both the man who’s trigger heeds an inner disdain for a socioeconomic class, and the man whose glass bottle and torch heeds and inner resentment of a socioeconomic class, err in the way of racism. Mankind is like a troubled pendulum trying to be still.

Divine love, the love present in the true Church, is totally blind to race. We see everyone as part of the same race and family. We are all both members of the apostate race of Adam and restored citizens of the Kingdom of God through the mercy of Christ.

On one hand, as children of Adam, we are in the humbling position of being debtors and thieves who have received pardon. We are also the oppressed who couldn’t get a break, kept under the thumb of spiritual forces of darkness, until Christ liberated us and restored our freedom and dignity. What man in this position can look at a vandal from the hood and scorn him as if he were better? Rather, he sees himself in that man and has compassion for him.

On the other hand, as children of Christ, we are dignified and we are real equals. We have an equality that is not based on money or color but on the blood of Christ that marks each of us alike and gives us infinite worth. We are free, not oppressed. This means, when we feel discriminated against, we have the courage to forgive our oppressors and stand up tall under oppression with a banner of peace, instead of lashing back. This is the kind of courage that Martin Luther King Jr. had and I am confident it was possible through his faith in Jesus Christ, in the midst of the other, violent protesting of the 1960’s. And in the end, it means that we don’t care about getting a fair share of power in society because we have infinite power in another society, and this earthly society is cheap and decaying. Those with less power who clamor for equality would be their oppressors if they could. This is the sad situation in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. What vice goes around comes around.

But those who are free in Christ are cut free from the whole vicious cycle and are empowered to neither perpetrate nor exact revenge. Praise be to God who alone breaks the chains and sets captives free.

A conversation with God about my vocation

Hello God.

Hello Son.

I have a problem.

Go ahead.

I don’t think I can be a linguist.

Hm. I thought you liked linguistics.

Yes, I do, but I think I have to give it up.

Why is that?

Well, I’m not sure it matters. It’s not ultimately important. I want to live my life for what really matters most. I don’t want to waste my life, not a minute.

And what is it that matters most?

Your Kingdom, God. Your Kingdom is the only thing that is going to survive this life. Everything else will be burned up! I want to receive a reward for building into the eternal kingdom, not an earthly one. I want to construct my life around the pursuit of souls, not salary. You know, leave my nets and be a “fisher of men.”

Thank you! But, why does this mean you have to give up linguistics?

Linguistics is my version of Peter and James’ fishing. It’s an earthly occupation that I have to sacrifice in order to follow you with my whole life. I mean, I could still do it to pay the bills—maybe, it wouldn’t be the most efficient—but I should do it “as if I’m not doing it” like Paul says—my heart and focus should be on reaching the lost. It’s not like any research I do on language learning is going to be useful in heaven; the only thing that will matter is whether souls received your hand of grace or not.

What about what John Piper’s sermon said about how you can bring glory by working with excellence?

Funny you should mention that, I was just thinking about it.

I know.

Well, that means that I work so that people see my excellence and give you glory because they know I’m a Christian, right? And to really be a linguist, I mean a halfway decent one that I would feel proud of being, I would have to put a lot of energy and life into it just as a field in itself, maybe work that people wouldn’t notice or appreciate. We’re talking countless hours reading, theorizing, researching, writing, publishing. Lots of people are good at linguistics—I’m not a genious, and I’m not sure that every paper I write is going to make people go, “Whoah, you’re a genius, you must be inspired by God, tell me about your beliefs!”

So you’re not sure that people will necessarily adore me because they see your work ethic.

Right, I mean, it seems like a stretch. Lots of non-Christians are really good at their jobs. I know I can hold my own and earn respect but that’s about it.

Well, what about them? You can invite your colleagues to dinner and such. You know, develop relationships through your job and seek the Kingdom in those.

Yeah, that’s good. That’s good…

What is it? You seem hesitant.

What it comes down to is that I don’t just want my job to be a means to an external end. Whether at home or abroad I don’t want to work all day just “so that I can…” fill-in-the-blank, speak into the culture, meet people, show people that I’m a gloriously good worker, etc. It feels duplicitous. I actually want the work I’m doing—the work itself—to mean something. I don’t want to live a meaningless career in order to live meaningful weekends. I can’t give my heart into intellectual pursuits if I think it’s all for naught. I mean, there ARE jobs that are inherently meaningful, outside the church, right?

Indeed, some a great deal more meaningful than those inside it.

Okay, but are any of them meaningful apart from the fact that people notice their excellence or their faith in you?

Absolutely. Some of my favorite people have gone quite unnoticed.

Then how….oh wait, got it. You mean that when we do our work, we’re showing you we have faith by obeying and working hard and trying to abide in you while we do it. So it doesn’t really matter what I do as long as I do it in faith.

That’s right.

Let me get this straight. I do anything that I want, abiding in you, and it can be meaningful and have eternal value?

Yes.

Trash collector?

Yes.

Hermit?

Yes.

Accountant?

Yes.

Salesman??

…Yes.

God I thought I had you with salesman. Okay, fine…so when you say “eternal value” you mean that these jobs are means that can help turn our hearts to you and in that sense, as physical means to spiritual ends, they have eternal value. But nothing of the job itself is valuable.

Who told you that?

Um…you?

I don’t recall saying that. But I do remember that I gave your father Adam the command to fill the earth and subdue it. I told him and his descendants to participate in the making and ruling of the physical world.

But this earth is passing away…

Do you think you alone will be redeemed? The earth also is groaning for redemption. And it’s waiting on you. I am redeeming it through you—you are made in my image to be kings of the earth and to exercise my kingdom over creation, physical and all. Art, music, literature, science, technology, exploration, agriculture, industry, education—these are all ways that you reign as free men, stewards, lords, saviors of the physical world. Of all my creation man alone is both spirit and flesh.

Wow, okay…but…being an accountant might help you bring order to the universe but it can’t be eternal. No one is going to be an accountant in heaven. It’s still not eternal like a soul. There’s no “phonetic analysis of English speakers” in heaven that my research will contribute to.

Who told you that?

Wait! Are you saying there is linguistics in heaven?

There is linguistics that would make earthly linguistics seem like 2^nd grade sentence diagraming.

How is that possible? We will speak in the tongues of men and angels and all that.

It is not possible for you to understand heavenly sciences right now. Your brain would explode, Son. But just ponder the concept of angelic linguistics for a second.

What about accountants? Surely there’s no moneychanging in heaven.

There’s something of which the accounting you’re referring to is but a premonition.

So, how does the linguistics I do on earth end up in heaven? I mean how can my feeble work contribute if there’s already “angelic linguistics”?

It happens in ways you cannot imagine. But trust me, the essence of every work and object that you do will have its existence there. You can say I am one of those parents who puts all of their children’s art on the fridge, and it ends up getting framed later and becoming a really valuable heirloom years later.

That’s like some kind of Egyptian burying-your-gold-so-you-can-take-it-with-you nonsense.

*Sigh.* You moderns are so convinced you know better than the ancients. Well, let’s just say that the Egyptians were onto something but they lacked my truth and power and ended up with a lame imitation.

Okay, wow, really cool—I’ll have to think about that more. But, there’s still something bothering me. You commanded us to make disciples, to be your ambassadors, right? I mean, as much as everything we do day to day might be important, that is the most important because you commanded us to go to the nations and evangelize. “No Plan B” right?—WE are the means you have chosen to reach the world. If we don’t evangelize people will die in their sins. “How can they believe unless someone preaches to them?” You can’t tell me that our reaching the world for Christ—human souls—is not more important than doing other things that glorify you. You love man most of all your creation.

Well, he is the crown jewel of my creation.

Exactly.

But I think you are confused about something.

What?

Well, I did command you to make disciples of all the nations, and I meant it. But it sounds like you are taking responsibility for making it happen.

Well, yeah, God. We’re ambassadors. We’ve got to work on your behalf. We represent you. That’s how you set it up. The way you’ve designed it, we’ve been tasked with preparing the way for your spirit’s work. So we have a responsibility to do that work.

The way you’re describing it, I’m in heaven, and you’re on earth, doing the work.

Well, in the power of your spirit, yes. Your spirit functions through us.

True, but you’re forgetting the other side of the coin. You function through my spirit. In other words, it is my spirit that stirs and acts in you. It’s not your responsibility, it’s mine.

Wait, God, are you taking sides on the whole faith vs. works issue here?

It’s not a question of faith vs. works. It is works of faith. Works of faith are works done by those who work to live out my commands, while also accepting the truth that all of their ability to do so comes from me. My spirit is a power entirely alien to the human soul. It blows where it wishes; you are not responsible for its causes, nor its results. You can only receive and rejoice.

That seems paradoxical. Obey your commands but accept no responsibility?

It is paradoxical. I love paradoxes. Think of it this way: destiny. How many great stories have a hero who has some sort of mysterious destiny?

Quite a lot, actually.

That’s because it’s a real thing. Destiny is when the protagonist has a mission that he must pursue by the sweat of his brow but there’s something greater than him that’s moving him toward it all along. When I command you to make disciples, I’m not so much trying to convey marching orders as to show you your destiny. I never meant for you to take it and run with it. I was trying to say that you would do great things by me, not that you should do great things for me, as if I were sitting up here in heaven waiting for you to fetch the stick and drop it at my feet. My spirit is alive in you, the lamp of your soul going everywhere you go. He will bring about every good work I have intended you to do.

I don’t know, God. When you gave us the command to make disciples of the world it sounded like you were giving us a responsibility to me. I mean, “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth…”

“…When the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…”

“…and lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

You said, “As the father sent me I am sending you.”

And it was then I breathed on the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Oh my God, I think you’re right.

I do know the book pretty well.

Well, what about all the great heroes of the faith who have been so sold-out and burdened for the lost and have gone to great lengths for you?

If I wanted them to go to the nations, what is it to you? It was my Spirit that raised them up, and my spirit will raise you up to the things I have planned for you. Don’t compare. I have plenty of great things in store for you, just wait. Don’t worry about being great, just be mine.

It does kind of take the guilt and pressure out of it. I’ll admit I’ve had some.

You are free to pursue every good work, including reaching out to others, with all your might—without the pressure to perform. Trust me, I’ve got this. I’ve got YOU.

Well, *phew*, that’s actually…really relieving, God. Thanks.

You’re welcome.

Okay, so if you’ve “got this” then…well what job do I do? What am I supposed to do? I’ve been focused on that directive for so long.

That’s up to you.

You mean I just do whatever I want?

If you’re abiding in me, yes. Well, almost. I think “drug dealer” is out.

How do I choose?

Pick the one you have the most joy in.

Why joy?

Well, you are free. Joy is the motivation of free people.

How do I know which one I have the most joy in?

Haha, I can’t tell you that. Well, I could, but it’s much better if you figure it out. You’ve got to learn to know yourself. Go crazy, follow your heart! I love to see you happy and fully alive.

Gosh, there’s so much possibility now.

Really does open the world up, doesn’t it?

Hmm.

Go ahead, think for a minute.

God?

Yes, Son?

I think I want to be a linguist.

“Truth has to be logically consistent”

Today I watched a sermon from Frank Strickland at CBC. He raised the enormous question, “What is truth?”, the intent being to contend for absolute truth, vis-a-vis the existential relativism of postmodernism. I greatly appreciate Frank’s message and I applaud his desire to engage with the thinking of the age. However, I detected what I believe to be an oversimplification or a confusion of terms that might throw off some of his listeners.

Frank provides three “tests of truth” before he gets to defining truth. It must: be logically consistent, align with reality, and be relevant to life. I recognize the first two of these tests from my study in linguistics. In semantics, the definition of a proposition is something that can be shown to be either true or false and thus has “truth value”, as opposed to its parts, nouns and verbs, which do not have truth value. Propositions are subject to logical tests and comparison to models (realities) in order to determine their truth value. Mr. Strickland, therefore, is regarding truth as propositional in nature. He explicitly states, “Truth has to be logically consistent.”

The conclusion of Mr. Strickland’s message is that “Jesus is the truth,” based on scriptures including John 14:6. I affirm with him that Christ is the Ultimate Truth, the deep truth that is meant in the question, “What is Truth?” as asked by both Mr. Strickland and Pontius Pilate, and what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the Truth.” However, this conclusion conflicts with the statement he made earlier, that truth “has to be logically consistent.”

If Jesus himself is the Truth, then he exceeds and transcends a black-and-white/propositional/logical understanding of truth. Truth, with a capital “T”, includes propositions but is not limited to them. It also includes inherent contradictions or paradoxes which Christians embrace as core elements of their faith. The Trinity. The Hypostatic Union. Free Will and Predestination. To force these glorious mysteries to conform to logic is hubris; it defiles the sacred with one’s intellect and inevitably causes error. Whereas clear propositional truth from God is an essential rock to which we attach ourselves in faith, still God transcends logic. Logic is the order of the universe, yet it is incapable of capturing its own Maker. Therefore, Divine Truth is not merely veracity. To embrace Christianity is to embrace logic as the handmaiden of God but to acknowledge that there are some inner chambers that she cannot enter; and those are the chambers to which God calls us. It would be a grievous error to assume that Jesus “has to be logically consistent,” for that would bind God in fetters of his own making and make him a slave to the human intellect.

I believe it behooves Christians to content for truth as it applies in the realm of logic and philosophy, but to clearly mark its end, and to set apart as different and sacred the way that we know The Truth Himself in the deepest place of our being. When we relate to others about God, we must bear a constant humility toward what we know and reverence toward the mysteries of God, and we must use logic in its place but keep it there, bearing in mind that what people are ultimately searching for is not the ability to know the truth value of a sentence, but the ability to know the One True and Living God.

The Game of the Royal Way

The Narrow Road by Brother Andrew contains an amazing story about how he trusted God while being dirt poor. God not only came through miraculously every time, but Andrew learned that he didn’t have to plead, beg, and beat his chest before God in order for God to provide – with Sonship comes the right to maintain your dignity as you trust God to meet your needs, and trusting God does not mean that you must be willing to wander the earth like a beggar. God is more powerful than that. Brother Andrew called this the “Game of the Royal Way”. It has been a very influential concept that has balanced my Christian walk since I first read it in high school. May the Lord give me such faith whenever I am in a place of seemingly insurmountable need.

How children, and we, know God

I had a delightful conversation with Beth yesterday reflecting on her experiences at Rainbow Riders Childcare Center, where she currently works, and the idea of whether we would send our children to a Christian preschool or school. Our sense is that many of today’s Christian preschools are kind of propaganda machines. We agreed that we value teaching our children about God, but we think that an overemphasis on the story of Noah, our weekly memory verse, and a simplistic message of salvation can make children “get saved” when they really have no clue what they are doing, they are just being herded blindly into demonstrations of Christianity by teachers too eager to “get them saved young.” The better way is to follow Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s parents and instill critical thinking, asking them to question why. If you do this in a context where Christian practices such as liturgy are observed, and which the children are made a part of, eventually children will ask questions like, “Why do we eat the bread and wine?” And then parents will genuinely answer their questions. This puts an exploration of the sacred mysteries of faith on the same ground as any learning a child does: it’s best done when there is a level of self direction and autonomy by the child. Beth’s Reggio Emelia method supports this, and it makes sense. Now don’t get me wrong, we’re in favor of explicitly teaching the Bible and Christian doctrine. But just in a gradual way that treats doctrines as holy and recognizes that the ability of a child to participate in Christianity grows with their ability to comprehend abstract thought.

At that point I had a thought worth remembering:

As a father, regardless of how much I try to make my children understand the abstract ideas of their Heavenly Father, I am the concept of God they will understand.

Children understand things symbolically and incarnationally. They can have some ideas about Jesus and God, but at a young age he will be in the same category as Santa Clause to them. Beth was saying how her children made up some wild extrapolations about Santa Claus. One said, “Santa Clause lives in the cold, so if he comes out of the cold, he will die!” Child logic is not very trustworthy. Don’t give them guns and knives, and don’t give them complex conceptual structures. I think this goes for telling them about God too.

In fact, really, all of us humans can only really know things through incarnation. I saw this the other day, speaking to my colleague. She said, “I explained everything about an opinion essay to my students, in excruciating detail. Then we went to write one and my students didn’t have a clue.” My response was, “I find that my students don’t have a clue what I’m talking about until they actually do it, or at least look at a good example.” ESL students need concrete examples and models, and they need to participate personally in something, before the intellectual understanding really comes through. Intellectual understanding rarely produces real comprehension by itself.

It occurred to me: This is why Jesus came! He is the incarnation of God to us. He knew that, without him, all of God’s revelations would eventually produce distorted constructs in our minds. We would go about saying, “God can’t leave heaven because he’ll melt,” or things like that. So he took on flesh and dwelt among us, the image of the unseen God.

It puts an immense pressure on me as a future father. Lord, help me not only teach, but BE a right image of you.

And it creates a beautiful sense of awe at the Christian faith, which, more than any other religion, understands the needs of the humans, the incredible mix of spirit and flesh, angel and animal, that we are. Thank you Lord for coming incarnate so that we might know you.

Ecumenism and mystery

Embracing the true mysteries of Christianity is the only way to fulfill Jesus’ prayer that we would be one as he is one with the father, for that union is itself one of paradox.

Ecumenism does not call us to water down doctrinal truth but rather to co-participate in mysteries that are truer than any doctrine that attempts to encapsulate them.

In this way ecumenism can correct the ways that western enlightenment-influenced theology overcorrected when it focused the essence of Christianity into right statements and precise doctrinal systems.

An honest consideration of the Word reveals that it is not the scriptures, but He about whom they testify. Language itself is a sign pointing to Him, and the more true our doctrine, the more we will understand that it does not exist of or for itself, but rather we will look along its arrow at the Living Truth.

We will know that there is more to truth than doctrine, and in this light we will be free to engage with others inside the fold with more generosity, and indeed we will also be able to relate to God more rightly, with a sense of his grandeur. Does it not glorify a father when he has a special relationship with each of many children, so that each knows some different things about him, but all know him truly and intimately?

Consider a child who believes he is the sole possessor of true knowledge about his father and cannot accept that his sibling knows something that he does not. This child knows less about his father that he pretends, for he has equated his father with his knowledge of his father, thereby reducing him to a concept under his control. He will be like Cain. By his disdain for his brother he reveals that he does not know their father and does not truly respect him as a greater, deeper, and realer person.

Far better is the child who remains in childlike awe and dependence upon the father, walking in a way of simple obedience, by all means judging between truth and seditious error and decrying an intruder into the house, but yet humble towards the brothers in all the other rooms in the house, those younger and older, having at the same time a confidence about his own personal knowledge of the father, and a right estimation of his importance, perspective, and intellect in the great household.

The answer rising up in some hearts at that statement is, “Yes, but we cannot compromise on the essentials of the faith! Things like soli scriptura are not simply parts of truth, they are bottom-line non-negotiables, and to put them on the table for discussion is to flirt with apostasy.”

There are certainly essentials. However, do we believe that “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”? As All Sons and Daughters say in their lyric, “To know you is to love you, and to know so little else.” Are we willing to approach our faith with the humility that comes from a reverent embrace of mystery? Are we willing to admit that our doctrine does not comprise all truth, knowing that this does not invalidate our doctrine, but rather exalts truth beyond the realm of human logic. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!

Two colliding narratives, and the only true story

Recently I have encountered two colliding narratives of the Christian life.

One is the War Zone narrative, that we are people who are fighting the lethargy, wealth-padded complacency, and provincial pettiness fueled by the American dream. God is fighting to free hearts from the tangles of empty, misguided “typical” life, which is really no life at all, and release them into an adventure of serving him with reckless abandon. In cutting of the ties that so easily entangle, we can life life to the fullest and seize the day like the Dead Poets’ Society, Bob Goff (Donald Miller’s friend), and The Jeskes. This harmonizes with stories like The Lord of the Rings, where small-town hobbits are forever changed by induction into the bigger world at war. The greater world of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. At the heart of the War Zone reality is the truth that we know God through sacrifice.

The other is the Green Pasture narrative, that we are people fighting the futile ambition, self-industrialization, and hubris fueled by the American dream. God is fighting to debunk the illusion that one can improve himself by effort, which in the church looks like striving for “personal growth” and “doing ministry”. He wants us to focus on him, not what we can do for him or what can be done for the Church (he will tell us if he wants us to do something, and he will handle the propagation of his church). We are, fundamentally, children, and our Christian life is to be in awe at his immense mystery and beauty. Cease striving and know that I am God. We must embrace the beauty and mystery of God in the everyday things, and through this, embrace God. Like in About Time, and Jayber Crow and The Incredibles and It’s a Wonderful Life, God calls us to be like Mary, not Martha. We are to abide in him, the well-spring of living water that quenches every thirst, the shepherd who makes us lie down in green pastures. At the heart of the Green Pasture reality is the truth that we know God through pleasure.

The troubling thing about these two narratives is that they are both quite true and yet apparently in opposition. If it’s war time you shouldn’t sit on your laurels. But if it’s green pasture you shouldn’t go running about taking matters into your own hands. The warriors accuse the sheep of laziness and ridicule them for their half-heartedness in their sermons. The sheep think the warriors are nuts and yet perhaps they do not take hold of certain deeper realities of Christianity because they can in fact only be won by suffering and relinquishing. The only way out is to conclude that either can be true, or both true to different degrees, in any person’s life at any given time. God deals with us individually, knowing the thoughts and motivations of our hearts. Luke is called beyond Tatooine, but the lost pets in Homeward Bound just want to get back to normal. It seems that in life, leaving home and returning home are constantly swinging back and forth as the active elements of the plot God is weaving for us. The two will always be in balance, in tension, in flux.

As a consequence, all voices of culture that are broadcasting one narrative or the other are suspect, and it becomes very difficult for anyone to say anything about the Christian life. All personal narratives about “what God did in my life” are stripped of their prescriptive authority. It becomes very difficult for me to tell someone based on my story whether they need to be more ambitious and get off the couch, or that they are working too hard and need to just trust. How do I know whether their rest or effort is motivated by faith, though mine was not? Motivational speakers, missionaries, authors, pastors, and spiritual pundits ought to beware of saying what everyone needs more of or less of in our culture today, or even publicly relating “testimonies” about how God did amazing things when I threw away my CDs and started helping at the soup kitchen (so you can too, and don’t forget we’re commanded to). In a sense, the post-modern mantra shows some truth: “What’s true for me is true for me, and what’s true for you is true for you.”

How can universal prophecy and truth survive if everything is individualized, if metanarratives are demoted to mere narratives? What image of the Christian life binds us together in one reality, and by what authority does it do so? What is left when all the clamoring talkers of Christianity have been cleared out? There is a metanarrative that speaks with divine power and mystery beyond words. Through the scriptures and sacraments of the holy Church, Christ’s Body and Voice preserved through the ages, we experience the true narrative, the historical Gospel, narrated by the patriarchs. When all other narratives have lost the power of metanarrative, one Voice remains imbued with universal authority by God and speaks with all the force of divine mystery, enacting spiritual realities that transcend words, and creating in the Christian the balance between War and Pasture, like the balance between cold Yin and hot Yang, which is tended in the soul by none but the Spirit of the Living God. It behooves us, therefore, to inquire of the Church as to the narrative she received from the apostles and gave also to us. Amidst many who claim to speak for God, we must go back to scripture, to the teachings of the early church, and to the sacraments of the church. There we will partake (not merely hear, for it is more like bread than sound) and will know the only true story.

Vicarious aid, or, On World Vision’s recent decision and the response

For some odd reason, despite myself, and despite (or perhaps because of) the tense, divisive potential energy of the issue, I get most stirred about current events that relate back to (gay) marriage. And there are a lot of them. It’s like watching a great historical shift take place, one event at a time. The last big one was Duck Dynasty, and now we have World Vision. When I am old, I will probably see it all from a distance and remember it as one big shift.

On March 24, World Vision decided to allow the hiring of gay people. After their evangelical constituency dropped support of some 2,000 children within 48 hours, they changed the policy back. Here is a take on the whole goings on. It is quite biased and polemic, but I chose it because it sums up the feelings of many people regarding the issue, including many members of the Church, including some people in my church.

There is some real, honest angst against the evangelical bloc in these young Christians’ hearts, for good reason: they can’t understand why you would make a little child suffer, make them a victim it the culture war you are waging against the gay agenda. They can’t understand why you would pull your support from “the least of these” because you find it more important to protest a gay person joining in your support of those poor children.

I affirm wholeheartedly that the sympathy towards those poor children is justified. They are indeed victims and their well-being must be prized above all. Yet, I will admit, before World Vision recanted, I was seriously considering pulling my support and giving it to another humanitarian organization. (N.B. I do not sponsor a child directly, I support general funds at World Vision.) I was probably going to do it. How on earth could I do such a thing? The question, the heart-cry of my generation, demands an answer. Indeed, were they not crying out, my own heart would demand answer: it is a matter of resolving the cognitive dissonance in my own mind and aligning my heart and mind on the subject. So let me undertake here to explain to myself and my generation the truth that I hope and believe is not in opposition to love, but that mingles with it necessarily to create that divine balance we are called to speak.

As I do so, by the way, I would like to point out that I have moved away from association with evangelicalism, for some reasons that bear at least external resemblance to those listed by Rachel Held Evans, and for some quite different ones. Therefore I would ask not be considered as a spokesperson for evangelicalism here, and to be given freedom from association with the good deal of baggage that the evangelical bloc brings to this issue. Listen to me as a millenial follower of Jesus who is struggling to make sense and harmony of his life- and ego-shattering teachings.

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So. I believe that my intended withdrawal of my funds from World Vision is not in opposition to my care and concern for those poor children. In fact, I believe deeply that it is because I hold a very great concern for them that I intended to withdraw my funds. Follow me:

First premise: True aid is always personal. The aid is devoid of its deepest meaning in absence of the personal context through which it is delivered. That’s why aid to Africa is often abused–give a man food impersonally, and he’ll stash it and steal his neighbor’s. Teach a man generosity by example, and he will, with God’s help, become a generous man. To truly aid someone, I must give them myself, not my money or my food.

So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. (1 Thess 2:8)

Jesus did not send a message, but came to us Himself. Perhaps he knew that we needed his aid, not “aid” in abstract. As Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message.” The people are the aid.

Second premise: In big aid organizations like World Vision the sponsors are not the ones personally giving the aid. Let’s face it: the connection that a sponsor in America has with that child in Bangladesh is vicarious, ephemeral, and superficial. Sure, you wrote them a note and they drew you a picture. But they think of you sort of like Santa Claus, not like a father or mother. Have you ever hugged them, or picked them up, or heard their voice? Have you really experienced their situation, met their caregiver, seen their school, walked between their house and the well that World Vision built to get water? Sponsoring a child through World Vision cannot be said to be truly aiding them, but rather to be sponsoring someone else to aid them. In large organizations like World Vision, the American sponsors have outsourced charity (in the old sense, meaning love) and been left with mere charity (in the new sense, meaning money). Even if true charity is done with our money, it is not we who do it in the fullest sense. I think that’s why World Vision lets you sponsor a child and get pictures of them, etc.– we want to feel a semblance of the personal connection we know must be there. Am I saying that sponsoring a child is bad? By no means! It just shouldn’t be confused with charity in the fullest sense. It’s good, but it only a part of the good that ought to be given, because the real ministry, the ultimate consummation of the aid, comes through the actual hands and feet that lovingly deliver that food and water, or teach in that dirt-floored one-room elementary school. For better or worse, we are doing only half of the ministry, and trusting those people we are paying to do the other half.

Third premise: The aid that we are called to give is aid in the name of Jesus. Aid apart from the name of Jesus is good, but it is less good, because aid in the name of Jesus has the ability not only to fill bellies or give people education, but to change the whole person–to bring not only water for the throat but the wellspring of living water, which, if you drink it, you will never thirst again. When I say “aid in the name of Jesus” I don’t mean aid from an organization that is branded as Christian, or is a politically or culturally “Christian” organization. I don’t mean sending children to Christian schools, per se. What I mean is that the Holy Spirit of Jesus, indwelling the body of a believer, ministers the food or water or health checkup to the child. In other words, there is something holy and importantly different when an anointed peasant-priest of God pours the cup of water, then looks into the eyes of that child and says, “God loves you, little girl.” It is almost an illocutionary act that changes reality, like when the pastor says, “I pronounce you husband and wife.” Bob Hitching said in a blog post on April 2 that he “would put serving the poor in the list of sacraments.” Therefore, it is crucial that the person giving the aid be a true believer.

Now, if you are giving aid yourself, that is pretty straightforward. You must have faith in God to be present with his sacramental power in your acts of love. However, if you are just supporting an aid organization, the situation is a bit different. You must have reason to trust the people you are giving money to, that they are true believers. That would be best done by personally knowing the people you are giving money to. We support our friends who are going to Africa because we trust them, because they are our friends and we know their hearts. However, let’s make the practical assumption that I cannot always personally know the people I am supporting or giving aid money to, i.e. I am giving to a big organization. This is the least desirable, perhaps, but necessary at times. In this case, I must vet that organization thoroughly and be super-cautious! What is their fiscal process like? What is their leadership climate? What is the heart of their employees? What are the conditions in the poor region I am funding? I think giving aid to an organization, if I must, demands, rightly, very high expectations for their alignment with the Church and my convictions. The aid is quintessentially the people (premise 1), and the people are those looking the kids in the eye as much as me who buys the food (premise 2), and true aid must be done in the name of Jesus by his holy servants (premise 3). Therefore, if I don’t trust people to be those holy servants, I shouldn’t support the organization. Truly caring about those children — caring about the whole child, body and soul — means that I must find trustworthy personal conduits of the holy spirit to deliver my aid.

The last piece of the puzzle is whether an organization that allows gay people to work there (whether “on the ground” or in administration is irrelevant) can be trusted to deliver true aid as true believers. I won’t go into this, but suffice it to say that I believe it cannot.

I don’t think Christians are in the either-or situation that people threaten them with, because there are no shortage of trustworthy ways to give aid (myself and vicariously), so I don’t have to choose between helping the poor at all and choosing ways to help that are in line with my beliefs.

These thoughts also open up further questions about whether I should devote more of my resources to serving personally instead of supporting through (any) organization. Hm. At least, they seem to resolve the issue with World Vision.