Happy Asian Man

There’s an outside chance God will let me be a happy Asian man when I get older.

I had just changed lanes in a slightly less than orthodox manner so I could get into the turn lane, when I glanced to the right and locked eyes with the mirror image of this potential future self. We found ourselves so entangled due to his failure to cooperate with the nonchalant voyeurism that is a part of my engaged-detachment from a world in which I encounter glorious humanity at far too high a volume to process safely. In fact, the sheer number of people I see in a day cascades toward me at such an alarming rate; I have had no recourse but to erect a transparent, double-paned bullet-proof glass barrier for my own (and their) safety. And I am very much not alone in this. The result is a world in which we all seem to be free floating in our own bubbles, billions of us blown on the wind from some sticky wand in the hands of a careless child who just can’t seem to get enough joy from multiplying relatively identical free-floaters.  And we all gaze at one another as exhibits in the zoo, politely avoiding prolonged eye contact, taking turns playing animal and kindergartener, silent partners in a voyeuristic time-share pact.

All of us except for the happy Asian man: he made direct eye contact, smiled, and waved at me. Like some kind of escaped tiger. My ingrained response would have been to break eye contact without turning my head, so as to provide him with enough plausible deniability that he could safely allow himself to believe that I had only been facing the area of his general direction, and not generally staring directly at his face. Only the indiscretion was so shocking, time contracted and I was able to experience all five or so stages of grief before the light turned, thus enabling me to break tradition and respond in a most untactful way: I smiled and waved back, horrified.

I wouldn’t have, except that at first I thought he must be Joe, the nice older Asian man I had met last night, recognizing me out and about in one of those serendipitous moments that annoyingly removes people from the context in which you have grown accustomed to seeing them, where you last left them to stay until your return like good Labradors. But it wasn’t Joe, and my brain not only told me that fact; it then applauded itself for not being one of those racists who can’t tell the difference between Asian people. After a series of alternatives were considered and dismissed with equal vigor, I was left with only one alternative: this man saw a complete stranger and his response to that stimulus was to smile and wave, which, as it turns out, can be a highly and inexplicably contagious disposition, not unlike a yawn. Careless.

All of this in less than a minute, and then I turned left, and I assume he went straight, because for him to have done anything else from that lane would have resulted in something I would have heard about behind me. I’m worried for that guy because we live in a world where it’s not really very manageable to have unprotected connections with strangers. But maybe he’s worried about me, and I’d kind of rather gone in his direction than mine, so maybe God will let me be like that someday.

Vanity and Van Gogh

On my way home for lunch today, my perpetually sullen NPR lady shared the following report:

On this day in 1890, Vincent Van Gogh died, two days after shooting himself in the chest in a wheat field. He made it back to his bed, where the doctor decided not to remove the bullet. His brother, who rushed from Paris to his side, was the recipient of these final words: “The sadness will never end.”

The jaded harbinger then moved on to her next bit of trivia while I weakly turned off the radio, pulled over, and wept a bit. 

Several years ago my friend Phil Tallon wrote a book called The Poetics of Evil: Toward an Aesthetic Theodicy. In the introduction, he allows Karl Barth to suggest to us that artists such as Mozart were masterful professors of a natural theology that they were somehow unable to rationally adopt. Mozart’s musical works, very much unlike his life, display a mighty triumph of light and hope over an ever-present darkness and despair. The truth cried out through opus after opus from his own genius, and yet he remained deaf to its message. What a tragic vessel. 

In my wallet is a Capital One credit card with Van Gogh’s Starry Nights emblazoned on its face, an ironic canvas for the work considering the man never saw a dime for his paintings. His wistful expressionism displays an iconic apprehension of the order, sense, and equity of the world that he simply could (would?) not translate to a working faith. It’s as though he believed in the swirling vision of colors and light and yet not in the mountain, stars, city, and wind themselves. Vincent died thinking he was nothing at all and that suffering was an indomitable force, tragically wrong about both of these things as even the work of his hands testifies. 123 years later, I choose to believe the proclamation of the man’s art over his life, forever affected by both. 

Psalms as Political Propaganda

My good friend Jason Hood interviewed Peter Leithart a couple of years ago on Christianity and politics. This paragraph is revolutionary.

Worship is the leading political activity of Christians.  In worship, we sing Psalms that call on God to judge the wicked and defend the oppressed, and God hears our Psalms; we pray for rulers to rule in righteousness; we hear the word of God that lays out our alternative way of life, and we sit at the table where we who are many are formed into one body, an alternative Christian polis, by sharing in the one loaf.  The problem is that in many churches those things don’t happen.  Churches don’t sing Psalms, and especially don’t sing the hard Psalms that call on God to judge the wicked.  More churches are having weekly Eucharist, but in evangelicalism that is still more the exception than the rule.  The first political agenda for American Christians is to get worship more into line with Scriptural requirements.

Catechism

This is one of the greatest things about being a dad: 

Josh: Who is the King?

Cecily: DADDY!!!

Josh: And who's the King of Daddy?

Cecily: JESUS!!!

Josh: Who's Jesus?

Cecily: God. AAAAAAAAAAND He growed up to be big and strong and HIS Daddy the ooother God chooseded him to be the King.

Josh: That's right, and do you know how Jesus became King?

Cecily: [incredulously] NO

Josh: He died on the cross

Cecily: But Daddy, kings don't die on a cross.

Josh: You're right, they don't usually, but Jesus died because of all the times we disobeyed. And then do you know what happened?

Cecily: Noooo [smiling]

Josh: He WOKE UP FROM THE DEAD AND NOW HE'S THE KING FOREVER AND EVER!!!!

Cecily: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!! [dancing around]

Beating a Dead Philosopher

[Lest one believe I fancy myself equal to sparring with the great Bertrand Russell, let me assure you that I only challenge the man with arguments I learned from far smarter men, borrowing confidence from the fact that he's dead and can't defend himself. Think of me here as the philosophical equivalent of a lion cub playfully pouncing on mortally wounded prey.]

Bertrand Russell said of God and the afterlife,  “If it is true you should believe it, and if it isn’t, you shouldn’t. If you can’t find out whether it’s true or it isn’t, you should suspend judgment.” This seems like a reasonable posture on a purely intellectual level, until one considers a more practical illustration.

Let’s say you find yourself in a dark room. You have slightly less reason to believe there is a man-eating tiger in this room as not. One does not simply suspend judgment - at this point one acts based upon other interests. Sure, you might end up seeming a fool if it turns out there was no tiger, but when the stakes are as high as life and death, useful caution wins out over Occam’s Razor.

Russell rejects Pascal’s Wager (try Christianity on and see if it works for you) on the principle that "one ought to believe something because it is true and not because it is useful." This is absurd. You cannot refrain from dubiously founded actions in this (not merely theoretical) life. I’ll bet Bertrand Russell wouldn’t suspend judgment in the above scenario. “Live to postulate another day,” and all that...

Idle Hands

"Labors [are] valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good." - Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness

Bertrand Russell was a brilliant man. If you can give this kind of writing your sustained attention, read the article linked above. His argument is insightful on a worldly level, but I wonder how much more robust and nuanced his view would be if he were committed to the Biblical assertion that man was created for royalty and not slavery. Russell divides work into two categories. The first is what the Bible calls toil: "altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter." I can attest that this is not what I feel I was made for, and yet it is often a necessary occupation of my life (though not nearly as much as my feudal ancestors'). On the other end of the spectrum, which Russell calls "the second kind," is the concept of lordship. This work is having dominion over lesser creatures with responsibility for their care. It is a kind of royalty. Adam's initial work was of this second kind, and part of the curse was his participation in the first.

Russell's intuition is that our praise of toil as a virtue is vestigial of a feudal mentality and ought to be abandoned in favor of a more civilized ethic. This is his argument: a) Idleness is more pleasurable than work. b) technology and philosophy are such now that hard work is less and less necessary for survival. c) therefore, we ought to reorganize our society so that we work less and play more.

Of course, his argument falls flat for me because of his a priori commitment to hedonism.  Unfortunately, if the chief end of man is merely to enjoy himself forever, then the system will always lean toward those with power, thus perpetuating the unsavory proportion of the few lords over the many workers. (Not to mention that I reject the hedonistic notion that all pleasure is qualitatively neutral and the only concern is to maximize its quantity and equity.) His intuition may be right, but his worldview is powerless to provide a sufficient argument to get him there.

If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then toil may be a necessary means to His glorious ends. One of these ends is that we might be transformed with ever increasing glory into His royal image, having become lords of all creation who will enjoy God's Sabbath rest forever. (See the New Testament, particularly 2 Corinthians and Hebrews). I fear for those who would repeat the Babel Heresy by attempting to circumvent God's means to arrive at a cheap substitution for His ends. For now, we ought both to work and rest with equal vigor, knowing that the Day is near.

Marriage as a Means of Grace

The most beautiful thing about marriage, (and certainly the most important), is not that two people enjoy one another so much. That is sweet and is sometimes true, but making it the touchstone is actually the downfall of marriage [no citation needed]. The primary reality (ontology) of marriage is that is that male and female enter into, faithfully mimic, and and are therefore shaped by participation in an integral part of God's life. He has made covenant with a Bride, which frames his interactions with her and everyone else for the rest of their lives. When we do likewise we are beholding, in a prolonged and intimate sense, the glory of God from the inside. 2 Corinthians says that this kind of activity, (in whatever form), is powerful to restore the image of God to humanity. Our religious symbolic gestures are not merely shadowy reminders of a higher, disembodied spiritual reality (I'm looking at you, Greeks). They are deep entrance into and participation with the kinds of embodied activities that remind us how to live and move and have our being in Him and on earth. That's not just supernatural; it is preternatural. It's sacramental.

Improv is for Historians

Much of contemporary worship is like a parody written and performed by those who have never seen the original.

Contemporary worship has earned the reputation of casting off the traditional liturgy in favor of a more relaxed spontaneity. However, as an artist, I can testify that improvisation is a skill that demands a prerequisite understanding of the historic form of the art. It only SEEMS spontaneous. Since we are the people of the Word, we cannot allow our worship to become ad lib (off book). God delights when our worship has creative flourish, but, as with improv, such flair only makes sense within context.

A lecture on the merits of rehearsal to develop a guitar player does little to motivate a young boy toward discipline. However, if the same young man sees a brilliant guitarist play with skill, he will be more inclined to give his attention to preparing himself by imitating the disciplines of those who are further ahead than he. Once he has mastered those habits, he can begin to make variations on that theme. 

Worship is that vision of what the world and we can be. Since we have little time each week to devote to casting this vision, we must be diligent in its preparation. Christian corporate worship is designed to give Glory to God in such a way that shapes the redemptive imagination of the Body of Christ. When the human imagination is stirred to ponder and desire the eschatological realization of the Kingdom of God, his weekly devotion to discipleship and mission will become more fervent.

We can’t just wing that kind of inspiration.

HWGAIHWM (The New WWJD)

I haven't posted in well over a year, but I don't have a better place to put this thought, so here goes.

A FEW THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY Philippians

Regardless of the negative connotations that accompany "WWJD" in the collective human subconscious, the sentiment can still be deeply Christian. We ought to behave in each moment motivated by the question, "how would God act if he were me?" This is is a dramatic reversal of "how would I act if I were God?" The latter is already the natural posture of fallen man (think of how many times you've wished He'd willed differently) and brings with it the ravaging tyranny of rebellion from which we have already grown so tired and old. The former, however, is the hope of the world. When the Spirit animates the Bride to manifest the character of Christ, the world by grace is given myriad manifestations of its Creator as beams of brilliant light from within the shadowy chaos of worldly broken nature. This is how it was always meant to be, and will be in eternity: we will be like God.

We already know that if God were a man, he would be made keenly aware by way of devotion and study of the greater story of the glory of God and of his unique place within it, therefore making the most of his time. He would leverage his resources to bring redemption to every situation that happened to intersect his small, mortal body.  He would be the fulfillment of the virtuous man of whom Aristotle often spoke (better than he knew). In the Philippian hymn, we see Jesus as stand unwavering in the face of death (courage), restraining his entitlement to equality with God (temperance), and instead expressing a calculated resolve (prudence) to redeem humanity before God (justice).

We would do well to allow this destined second nature to be formed in us with fear and trembling as we remember our place in Christ and his story and endeavor to respond as his images in the garden city.

The Gospel Is Better than Nice

So this is pretty old by now, but still relevant (is that even possible?!?!):

A vocal minority claims that the film Avatar is racist on a fundamental level because it propagates the archetypal white man coming in as the messiah of the savages.

"It's really upsetting in many ways," said Avatar star Robinne Lee, who is black with Jamaican and Chinese ancestry. "It would be nice if we could save ourselves."

It would be, but we never can. And as "upsetting in many ways" as that is, we must accept the bad news before we can receive the good news.

*Let the record show that Jesus is not white.

The Primary Purposes of Church Music

1. to aid the memorization of doctrine and scripture
2. to facilitate active participation in united confessions of faith
3. to stir the affections for Christ

I try and let these shape every worship service I lead. Are there more? 

Nevertheless...

Conjunctions are so important. "I generally believe in pacifism, nevertheless I must kill you now, for you have eaten the last pink Starburst."

I believe Jesus' prayer in the Garden would have been incomplete had he merely said, "Thy will be done." You know, as if he was supposed to just man up and John Wayne the Passion. Just put on your poker face and stare down the Enemy. No, Jesus didn't suppress his own identity in order to glorify His Father's. Instead, along with his unconditional surrender to the perfect will of His Father, Jesus also disclosed His own hurts, fears, and desires to His Daddy. I think this is VITAL for us as we think about what it means to live in relationships where authority and submission come into play. Jesus modeled this perfectly by making not only His surrender but also His vulnerability complete. He may have stood silent before his mockers, but not so before the True Judge. Jesus knew and even said that Pilate held no power over Him, but His plea was loud and clear to the One in Whom authority did rest. "I don't want this!" But a real man knows his place.

Nevertheless... Your will be done.

We often think that submitting to authority subverts our individuality. This is not so. It only prioritizes it according to what will bring God the most glory. I hate that the words "dominate" and "Lord" have etymological ties (domini), but Jesus showed us a different way to view "Lord." He hearkened his ear to the cry of His beloved. He had compassion upon the harassed and helpless. All authority (dominion) in heaven and on earth belonged to Him, and so He used that position to have Himself brutally murdered for the sake of our needs. That's not domination - that's lordship.

On her best days, when my wife comes to me for something, she comes having already committed to follow my lead as a fully invested supporter. But that doesn't mean she has to agree with me or keep her opinions to herself. In fact, she knows that my devotion to her means that she has more influence than anyone else in my life, and I will only tell her no when I can see no other alternative. She trusts me in that and so she feels free to be both vulnerable and submitted at the same time. She should have nothing to hide. It would grieve me to know that she had ever withheld her feelings from me in the name of obedience to me. Now translate that to your own prayer life (hint: you're the bride).

Postscript - I can sympathize with people who would prefer an egalitarian approach to marriage on the basis of having seen this trust continually violated. Nevertheless, I believe complementarian marriage reflects a very Biblical model of these relationships - both the complete vulnerability of the beloved and the final accountability of the lover for having seen to her well-being over and above his own.  Jesus, as his Father's beloved and His beloved's Husband, modeled both positions FLAWLESSLY. Let us imitate Him in whatever role we might play.

Cities Apart

Several years ago I met a quiet curly-headed kid who could shred on the guitar. He's now one of my truest friends, and I can't imagine life without him. A couple of years ago, we began writing some worship songs together, and then with the support of our church, we began the recording process. On March 5th, we will release Cities Apart. I'm really proud of this work, and I hope it's a blessing to everyone who purchases it. The profits will support refugees in Memphis. We're not making a huge deal out of that for fear of exploiting our brothers and sisters, but we do want people to know that the object of our affection is the Lord whose concern is for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner, and so we're putting your money where our heart is.

You can become a fan on Facebook to stay updated,

Or visit www.citiesapartband.com.

Andrew Peterson, Tolkien Style

"I am convinced that poets are toddlers in a cathedral, slobbering on wooden blocks and piling them up in the light of the stained glass. We can hardly make anything beautiful that wasn’t beautiful in the first place. We aren’t writers, but gleeful rearrangers of words whose meanings we can’t begin to know. When we manage to make something pretty, it’s only so because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas. That means there’s no end to the discovery. We may crawl around the cathedral floor for ages before we grow up enough to reach the doorknob and walk outside into a garden of delights. Beyond that, the city, then the rolling hills, then the sea. And when the world of every cell has been limned and painted and sung, we lie back on the grass, satisfied that our work is done. Then, of course, the sun sets and we see above us the dark dome of glittering stars." - Andrew Peterson

If you liked that but you've never read "Leaf, by Niggle" (pronounced Ni'juhl), check out J.R.R. Tolkien's heart-wrenching short story celebrating an artist's journey into sanctification.

The Sci-fi Writers of the 20th Century Would Flip.

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, calls today's humans "cyborgs."

“If a cyborg can remove its digital eye and leave it on a shelf as a surveillance device, and I think we all agree that it can, then your cellphone qualifies as part of your body.” He sees the phone as an exobrain: “Your regular brain uses your exobrain to outsource part of its memory, and perform other functions, such as GPS navigation, or searching the internet. If you’re anything like me, your exobrain is with you 24-hours a day.” - via moreintelligentlife.com


Implications? I'm thinking many.

Tweeders

There's an implied element to Twitter that is conspicuously ignored in its language. Can there be so many followers without leaders? Are you willing to admit that following someone means you're allowing them to lead you in some way? Are your own tweets leading anyone anywhere worth going?

The Insufficiency of Time

"Time heals all wounds"

Who said it? It's not in the Bible. Most would attribute this proverb to Chaucer, who actually got it wrong here. It's vaguely comforting; it's just not really very true. It's the kind of popular line people pull out when they are groping around in their ill-stocked memories for something compassionate to say to a grieving friend (a good reason to memorize Scripture). When I look back on some of the things I did and said in my teens, I often ease my regret and disgust with the thought that these events occurred over ten years ago and I'm a different person now. I can forgive myself for having been so daft and coarse. On a much smaller scale, if I can keep myself from gnawing my nails for a week, I often look at my former nail-biting self as a sort of monster, far removed from the civil human I am now.

But let me ask you this: if the man were caught today who had murdered your brother ten years ago, would you accept his version of that defense? "I was a different person then. Time has healed this wound. I am not responsible for what that young man I was once did so long ago." A general rule of jurisprudence is that if the argument only sounds good when you're using it to defend yourself, then it's probably not a good argument.

Time cannot erase consequences. It cannot separate you from culpability that you have earned for yourself. It cannot make you into a different person. In fact, most often time festers wounds, multiplies bitterness, and hardens hearts. Time is no friend to the hurting. That's why Hell is such a believable reality to me.

But Jesus IS a friend to the hurting. And if you'll let Him, He will take that time, along with all the mess that is your life and He will forgive and recreate every bit of it.

He will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
   from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
   from all the earth.
            The LORD has spoken.
Isaiah 25:8

"Be very careful then, how you live, not as unwise but as wise, and redeeming the time, for these days are wicked." Ephesians 5:15-16

Nietzsche is Dead. God is Risen. Christ Will Come Again.

Nietzsche misidentified the body of the god whom he pronounced dead. His philosophy had successfully attacked and killed the Supreme Ontology of Greek metaphysics, not Yahweh of the Jews. Easy mistake to make, considering the contagious Neoplatonist conceptions of the God of Scripture found in Origen and Augustine. In fact, the Great I AM had his own people to kill him, but that was 1900 years prior to Nietzsche, and unlike the philosopher's own demise, Jesus' death just didn’t take.

I wish you a very surprising Epiphany today. 

What Happens When I Read Descartes in the Morning

The attempt to divorce reason from revelation is itself irrational. Reason cannot exist without revelation because a grammar cannot generate its subject. Reason is form and not content, which is to say it can only contain something that exists independently of it. The life of the mind is an attempt to make sense of that with which it has been confronted. The mind is an operating system; revelation is a series of programs. The ability of reason to arrive at Truth is contingent upon:

a.) the furnishing of sufficient and reliable premises by an outside source,
b.) one’s ability to receive these revelations accurately, and
c.) one's ability to interpret and meaningfully combine these to produce useful conclusions.

I think an honest and humble assessment will show that this is an uncommon confluence of circumstances. Our mental logic boards are filled with viruses and there's a lot of bad information out there to begin with. God help us.

Recent Logos/Ethos/Pathos Sighting

Calvinist philosopher John Frame claims that knowledge has three perspectives to it: the normative perspective, situational perspective, and existential perspective.

1. The normative perspective asks, “What do God’s norms [the Bible] direct us to believe?”
2. The situational perspective asks, “What are the facts?”
3. The existential perspective asks, “What belief is most satisfying to a believing heart?”

Sounds an awful lot like:

1. ethos (ought = goodness)
2. logos (facts = truth)
3. pathos (satisfaction = beauty)

 I'm sure Mr. Frame cited my blog in his dissertation, so I won't bother to check. Although I am a little miffed that he botched the order. Amateur.