a humble admonition
I begin to worry when I start excitedly telling others about the clear crawdad in the creek, lightning bugs and their early arrival, the way the colors fell in last Thursday’s sunset, how the baby blue jay hopped right up to the swing, squawked, and leapt on my shoulder. What am I doing? Who am I trying to convince? I see their eyes go blank, their voices on the telephone grow apathetic and wary. We had a saying when I was in the Assembly of God church regarding the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit, which meant speaking in tongues for us at the time: “It’s better felt then tellt.” But I wonder if my baptism isn’t occurring in my swing or at the creek? Sometimes I want to yell “Sha la la la la!” Tongues. It’s easy. No one telling me to keep pressin’ in. With this baptism I don’t have to press in; I just have to open my eyes. There he is---Spirit! Tongues of fire! A lingua comes pouring forth that I didn’t know I possessed. It’s worship and awe, utter thankfulness at such gratuity. Creation is nothing if it’s not gratuitous. Please! See this! God burns for you to receive and reciprocate his affection, and he burns the sky each day to show it. He’ll burn you! He sends grace fluttering by as sparrow; he shows fierceness, even urgency—the danger of staying put—in the ants that bite your feet; he shows his everlasting strength in the immortal sycamore; he shows his creativity and commitment to life in death and decomposition itself, the energy cycle; his fecundity in birth and spring; his compassion and providence in the rain; his passion in the storm; his irresistibility in gravity; his consistency in the laws of motion---"In the absence of a net force acting upon it, an object moves with constant velocity." What is that force that keeps you from leaping into the blue? God wants you here, or he would have given you the capacity for escape velocity. You would have been made less, an angel.
Please! See this!
Don’t let concrete and steel, television and internet hypnotize you. Stop reading now, and step outside. Just open your eyes and you’ll see something. Scan the ground, the base of a tree, the sky, the brick wall or sidewalk. You may have seen it a thousand times, but intricacy, the Spirit, has a funny way of striking you when you ask, seek, knock. Don’t think! Look! Look, feel, hear, taste! Think afterwards. Breathe. Lay down your defenses and problems and let creation speak to the heathen; it will, as Paul says, reveal that God IS, even tell us what he’s about. Find a sermon in the songbird, the grass, the clouds, the junebug, your lover’s eyes (don’t relegate “nature” to “wilderness,” it’s more; you’re in it whether you’re in Yellow Stone or New York City, but some places you have to look a little harder). I’ll give you a hint: look. No really! You’ve got to see it. See the color changes, the texture, the shapes, the pores, the moisture, the eyes, the whisps, the direction. I want you to see it. Look before you tell me I’m crazy. You've got to train yourself, force yourself to do it or it won't get done, and you'll miss too much. What you see is really what you get! Happy hunting.
Please! See this!
Don’t let concrete and steel, television and internet hypnotize you. Stop reading now, and step outside. Just open your eyes and you’ll see something. Scan the ground, the base of a tree, the sky, the brick wall or sidewalk. You may have seen it a thousand times, but intricacy, the Spirit, has a funny way of striking you when you ask, seek, knock. Don’t think! Look! Look, feel, hear, taste! Think afterwards. Breathe. Lay down your defenses and problems and let creation speak to the heathen; it will, as Paul says, reveal that God IS, even tell us what he’s about. Find a sermon in the songbird, the grass, the clouds, the junebug, your lover’s eyes (don’t relegate “nature” to “wilderness,” it’s more; you’re in it whether you’re in Yellow Stone or New York City, but some places you have to look a little harder). I’ll give you a hint: look. No really! You’ve got to see it. See the color changes, the texture, the shapes, the pores, the moisture, the eyes, the whisps, the direction. I want you to see it. Look before you tell me I’m crazy. You've got to train yourself, force yourself to do it or it won't get done, and you'll miss too much. What you see is really what you get! Happy hunting.
i'm liking this. makes me want to go out to the ocean again or go walk up mt. tabor.
Posted by
Anonymous |
10:39 PM
you should do it! and tell me what you find.
Posted by
takers |
4:51 AM
With your illuminating commentary I believe that you have hit upon a very complex and troubling problem. To be frank: why are we allowing theological naturalism to die?
It seems apparent that if we are to answer this question, and therefore justify your admonition, we must start at the very root of this ponderance. What is the fundamental "malfunction" that generates distance between one's ability to perceive the world around him and to make the necessary connections that God is apparent in those observations?
If we are being honest, we can rule out a majority of people based on the criteria that they are too stupid or unobservant to notice these things. Face it, it does take a certain capacity for critical thinking to look at an occurring object and say, "Man, that tree is an awesome declaration of God's love." A rather harsh reality, but thank the powers that be for scoffing at the notion that real critical thinking skills should be developed in elementary-aged students.
That aside, I am coming to realization that people no longer find God in nature because they have been lead to believe that there is a certain amount of separation between God and material Creation. This separation is thanks, in no small part, to the various Christian theological doctrines that state that there are two facets to the entirety of Creation: the material and the spiritual. This split is further divided by the notion of Original Sin; by the first sin of Adam, the entirety of Creation was tainted to the extent that even future generations would not be free of this spiritual darkness. By this, we can state plainly that God was forced, by the hand of humanity's newly developed free will, to retreat from the "material."
As Christians, we have thus come to believe that on some basic level, the world of flesh and material is fundamentally flawed. Why would any right-thinking person seek knowledge of God through a vessel that is, by our own admission, as filthy and sinful as ourselves? Few would argue that this is a viable means of discovering God when it is apparent, again by our own admission, that truth of God can be found in the pews and halls of fellowship within the church. Of course, we must be willing to ignore the fact that we are being lectured about truth by someone who is just as finite and sinful as ourselves. It is depressing that we have associated less spiritual purity with humanity than with Creation, but such is the cage that we have built for ourselves.
Secondly, Christianity and other monotheistic religions have done everything within their power to see fundamentally naturalist religions stamped off the face of the earth. America obliterated the shamanistic religion of the Native Americans, European druidism is shown as the evil contrast to Christianity in 4th century literature, and so on. Western cultures have done much, both in thought and deed to crush the notion that God is manifest, or even reflected, in nature.
What should we as enlightened Christian thinkers do? Even if no one professes it, we know that God can no longer be restricted by the convenient paradigms set forth by the classic Christian thought that many of us have come to accept as truth. We are becoming aware of our contradictions: we scoff at the notion that God is evident in nature because we fear limiting the divinity of God, and yet we have anthropomorphized Him to the extent that we believe that we can simply throw our arm over his shoulder and call him "buddy."
As right-thinking individuals, we have come to a juncture where we must make a statement about the fundamental nature of reality that will determine whether or not Mr. Aker’s admonition is based in truth or if he is spouting off heretical doctrine.
If we maintain that, yes, there is a rift between that which is spirit and that which is material, as classic Christians; we are spurred by Augustine to believe that this rift is inalienable and eternally persistent. Creation remains limited and sinful. Moreover, any “truth” we extrapolate from the world around us is a construction of our own rational processes and, due to our nature as inherently sinful, cannot be trusted as an honest reflection on the being of God.
Of course, I am certain that this sounds rather disagreeable and you, dear reader, may well be already generating a response to it based on the various heterodoxies that have been instilled in you. I am not concerned with these things, but only with the logical conclusions that can be derived from the writings of those who have established the theological foundations of modern Christianity. The previous paragraph is something that I like to call a “consequence” and we must all come to terms with the logical consequences of our parent religion. If we do not establish what is right and wrong within our own thinking, then we have no basis off of which to amend them. I apologize for my digression.
On the other hand, we can deny that initial rift between material and spirit and in so doing; we generate a world where God is not alienated from the things He created because He is the whole of Creation, or is at least honestly reflected in Creation. Of course, this creates justification for pantheism, shamanism, druidism, and other types of religions that Christians have labeled as heresy.
Such is the consequence of maintaining these more liberal minded ideas, but as modern Christians we are forced to evaluate our historical beliefs with our present rationale and reconcile these things against the various mistakes that the church has made in the past, both in thought and in deed. As I stated earlier, we are rapidly approaching a critical crossroads where we must decide what truth is. Think long and hard about the things that you hold to be true, dear reader. Tyler, though a bit transcendental, is attempting to provoking thought with his entries and it would be a great disservice to him and to God (considering the subject matter) if we did not consider the things he said with the full weight of our reason.
Posted by
Anonymous |
9:04 AM
To clarify and expound on my vagueness. Better to do it in the comment box than bog down the blog with this lengthy treatise. I don’t care if all readers see it, only those who care to. I mean to state my presuppositions, restate my points, and further articulate them in a more “reasonable” fashion—if I can do it at all—to all who are interested. I apologize in advance for the length.
The point being touched upon here should not be confused with the dichotomy of material vs. spiritual; rather, if it has to be reduced to dichotomies at all (and I don’t think it should), should be switched to sacred vs. profane. The first is an emphasis (albeit misplaced) on the physical and the metaphysical, while the latter is a focus on the two supposedly dichotomous realities of human or natural activity—the ‘church’ and ‘state’ of existence it could now be called. Is it Platonic? I don’t remember where such ideas originated. I don’t buy this dichotomy however. Furthermore, I would argue there is no separation between the sacred and profane: it’s all spiritual whether we’d like to see it that way or not. We also misunderstand if we assume that this dichotomy has always persisted; it still seems absurd to most nonwestern, non-industrialized peoples that there could be any separation between the sacred and profane, the spiritual and the practical. It would seem absurd to Jesus, and it seems absurd to me.
Nature, as it were, is that which has not forgotten its place, its origins: The creation waits in eager expectation. Creation remembers its beginning as much as we do, longing to a return to Grace, hoping under the weight of glory, no less good than from its beginning. But we’ll return to that later.
The fall is not incompatible with a natural theology.
If one cannot extrapolate any truth from Creation around us because it is flawed and sinful, then no one can extrapolate truth from anything, neither his feelings nor his reason. We can’t pick and choose where we are fallen and where we are not. (And I most certainly believe we are fallen.) Do we not all see through glass darkly? But how are we supposed to believe the world functioned before the fall? Lions only ate grass? There were no storms or lightning? But who said these things were bad? That a lion attacking a gazelle was evil? And isn’t grazing a rather violent thing in itself? Should we judge Creation’s condition as if it were our foul mistake? As if we were the judges? It’s always been this way. Eden wasn’t full of vegetarians. But the problem here becomes seeing the world the way it is, and trying to reconcile it with any other way we think (wish?) it could be. I believe it’s impossible. God has set up a system that would not work in any other way than the way it is. Why does a fall necessarily entail a change in process? Why not a change in status? Do we believe the first man was truly a vegetarian? Or breathed anything other than oxygen that had recycled through the decay of other animals? The many allusions in Scripture that I’ve recently looked at do not speak of the restoration of Creation as a processual return to some idyllic nonviolent garden that once existed. Maybe through redemption it will exist, but I find no place that advocates it ever has. And if it did, I wouldn’t believe it to be true. As much as I am Protestant (which is seemingly less and less these days), I do not share the Reformers’ zealous cry of sola Scriptura. Though my faith is that Scripture is authoritative, it is not exhaustive. That’s for another time though.
Is it so, then, that if one holds too obsessively to the fall, one leaves no hope for revelation? Apparently there is no other source, save for divine revelation, but that, regrettably, must also be placed under the fallen auspices of human nature, reason, and perception. To interpret any truth from any sensory perception is necessarily impossible then, just as much so reason. Again, is one left with no expectation or justification for revelation? No doubt about it! God is what some might call helpless in our forcing him away, unless . . . Jesus.
If one holds faith in Christ, then his salvific work extends to all of nature, all Creation, not only humans (who are as much part of nature as anything else). Then he who “hews out channels through the rocks” (Job 28:10) leaves his print in those very rocks. Or perhaps they’ve always been there, they just become discernable for the first time. So what better to do than scry the signs, find out what blade or fire or lightning or finger or river stream, with the impetus of God, cut the channel?
Karl Barth wrote “NO!” to natural theology, but Barth was going against centuries’, if not all history’s, belief otherwise. Yet even he was inconsistent. Barth writes, “The whole world is the footprint of God: . . .” What’s the point of a footprint if it didn’t come from a foot, which was attached to a leg, that represented the one who left it? But he buttresses his point with “but, in so far as we choose scandal rather than faith, the footprint in the vast riddle of the world is the footprint of His wrath.” That faith is Christ, the scandal is any other interpretation. Without God’s redemptive plan, instigated in, perpetuated by, and to be culminated in, Christ, the wrath is all there is. There’s something more to be said than the whale eating the dolphin. But even if there were nothing more said, what more could we ask? Dare we speak of the mantis’ breeding habits as injustice in the same sense that we speak of the Holocaust? How dare we! We are certainly God’s greatest work, but it’s true that crayons and glue please a child’s parent as much as Van Gogh.
It’s not that God lost control of his Creation, as if it slipped out of his hands while he was looking to the side. No. What kind of God is that? I believe this was his plan, the way it is is the way it should be, the way he knew it would be from the start but went right ahead and did it anyway. Why? To have something, someone, to lavish his unending affection on, to engage in Triune relationaship, to woo to himself with all the mystery and knowledge that he would display in Creation and in Christ, his full self-revelation. If that’s heresy, light the pyre.
Or perhaps I should echo the more eloquent words of Chesterton at this point: “I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.”
All this being said, it is a misunderstanding to assume my point—and countless Christians and Jews through time—as a slippery slope to pantheism or new agism. And I don’t think Karl is making this mistake, I just want to clarify. Nowhere is it said that God is IN the cloud, in the stream, in the atom. Nor would I want that to be perceived. Nor is it of the same substance of what I say. Don’t think I’m unaware of my presuppositions; but this being a blog and not a philosophical journal, I temper my explanation, for the better, I hope. It’s the philosopher who always assumes the layman is ignorant of his reasoning and presuppositions, forcing those less qualified (such as myself) to qualify at every step, and to assume that presuppositions unstated are devils in angels’ clothing, while it is us lower men who don’t often concern ourselves with the obvious. Fretfully, I am not much of a philosopher in the good sense of the word. And I ask all readers who concern themselves with such matters to forgive me and pray for God’s better guidance and my better discernment.
But I don’t apologize for my language. I mean to strike up passion, love, and inquiry, and I have yet to be convinced that speaking as if I possessed true philosophical brilliance would achieve that. Nor do I possess the ability to say anything meaningful with such language. I truly admire those who do. But my soul was never sent flying after reading (or contemplating for that matter) Kierkegaard, Aristotle, or Plato. It has been set fire, however, reading the words of Whitman, Donne, Jesus, Solomon (a poet, in my book), Crane, and others. With the former I was moved to thinking; with the latter I am moved to action, awe and worship. Not that it isn’t turned around completely for others, though I pity them as much as they pity me. I think it was Plato (Socrates?) who articulated the conflict between the philosophers and the poets. I have no intention of striking any final blow, but it’s rather clear whose side I’m on. But my allegiance is not bitter, nor wholehearted.
I hope my words have somewhate clarified my stance and put a little bit more of my “reason” behind my blog—in both senses of the word.
blessings.
Posted by
takers |
2:02 PM
WoW. AMEN. i cant agree more with all that.. holy CRAP, its like... AHHH! its RIGHT THERE for us to see! every DAY! and what do we do...? its sad, really, how many of us dont give ourselves a chance to check out the Lord's beauty and majesty and just HIM. he's in everything he created and that alone blows my mind. haha! i love it! Father God you amaze me! i'm SOO giving myself more time just to stare at him every day, as much as i can. *sigh* its all there for us. he loves us, forgives us, is a part of us, and his grace is sufficient for me.. he IS Love. that perfect love that casts out fear, so look and fear no more. Turn your doves eyes to Jesus, and see what happens. lol. thats awesome. its amazing how much we take for granted, and its sad...
Posted by
Anonymous |
3:24 PM
btw that last post was in reply was in response to "a humble admonition"
Posted by
Anonymous |
3:26 PM
Holy Crap! anonymous, reveal thyself!
Posted by
GraceKathryn |
4:54 PM
I love your zeal "Anonymous"! But please don't confuse an important issue here: God is not IN these things, he's OUTSIDE of them; the best we can do is consider them pennies tossed from a very generous hand--pennies with his love and terror inscribed on them (see February's post called "from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" to see what I mean by pennies). Keep your excitement for God!
Posted by
takers |
5:20 PM
i'm just another child of the Father, in love with him and the way he shows himself to us. and what he does for us. [but you can call me Jett ;)]
its amazing how everything he made, including animals and ESPECIALLY US, men and women, he created it all to revert back to himself, who HE is, in many small or big ways. it was all done for his glory ;) it was all created by him and trademarked by him so we would KNOW it was HE and only he who made it all, and everything has/shows/holds/reminds us of certain characteristics of Himself. doesnt that BLOW YOUR MIND!? man, if i really think about it... WHEW! ive had a few new revelations recently like, OUT OF NOWHERE, just about things done for his glory and how we are literally made in his image. men and women [in different ways] portray characteristics/sides to who God is. we all know that we were made in his image, but like it just finally HIT my heart in a deep way, i guess hehe. its a butt bashing realization to come to, i know, but i'm falling more and more in love with him and the stuff he's given me and put around me, every day! Thank you Jesus!
Posted by
Anonymous |
9:32 PM
oh btw i didnt literally mean he's IN these things around us. like you could pop open a pineapple and find God just chillin in there or anything like that. i think we're on the same page hehe ;)
Posted by
Anonymous |
9:34 PM
I aplogize for any convolution. I tend to take after my philisophical idol, Kant, too much in that regard. My ramblings make sense to me and I sometimes forget that others might need a little more illumination.
I am no pantheist, though by my tone, I can see where that conclusion could be drawn. Regardless, I was striving toward pointing out the historically fascinating occurences where Christianity has attempted to obliterate the various religions that worship the natural world.
In light of this it is ironic that in Mr. Akers, who I respect and love, is appealing to other Christians to see the presence of the eternal in the world around us. Here, we Christians as a whole have attempted to squelch the notion that the material world is divine and now we regret this decision.
Goose, the things you have said seem to heavily echo the writings of Rahner, who I enjoy. Though I may not agree with your notion that man is inherently good, I find that a refreshing point of view from those who violently adhere to the notion of Original Sin.
I have sympathy toward those various religious institutions that have been stamped out in a historical sense. Though Christianity is the Truth, we should not be so arrogant as to believe that other religions and their adherents are unworthy of choosing their own paths. The way to Truth can not and should not be forced.
In stating that, I hope I have answered your second question: truth must be discovered and it must then be decided upon. We are called to spread the word of Christ, which should mean that we simply present the information of our religion to others. That is our duty and it cannot extend to forcing the recipient of the truth to accept it. That decision, simply, is left up to the individual.
If this relationship to the truth does not exist then what is the purpose of free will in Creation? We must be able to choose the truth or else said choice is fundamentally meaningless.
Finally, to clarify: every human faces a metaphysical crisis in which they must set forth that paradigms that will dictate how they interact with the world around them. For the average joe, this is less of an actual crisis and more of an acceptance of prescribed paradigms that have been previously presented by that individual's guiding figures (teachers, priests, parents, etc). However, to those who actually think about things (men such as you and I), we come to a point in our academic existence when we say "There are a multitude of ways in which the nature of the universe, life, and everything can be viewed and interpreted." We must then formulate ideas as to how the world around us works (In that, I mean we must dictate the metaphysical, axiological, aesthetic, epistemological, and rational function of the world around us). In the end, we either conform to the paradigm that is most conveneient for how we now view the world, or we generate a melting pot of ideas that best embody how we feel.
I hope that clarifies, sorry for the current vagueness, but I do not wish to muck up the comment box with expositions just yet.
Posted by
Anonymous |
7:45 PM
exposit away Karl! It seems there's no limit to the comment box, so I'd like to see this keep going.
Posted by
takers |
8:34 AM
Karl,
I think there was a misunderstanding when you say Goose says man "is inherently good." I don't think he means this (though he's capable of clarifying himself); if anything, I thought you were rejecting a doctrine of the fall, while I would hope to renegotiate the emphasis in relation to Creation. The notion of degree and extent is important and worth more investigation. I certainly am not a Calvinist, but total depravity is a TULIP point I'd agree with, with some qualification and proper definition--closer to what Calvin meant than what his followers cried.
Posted by
takers |
8:42 AM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Posted by
takers |
9:21 AM
On second thought, “inherently good” is a very troublesome term. By it do we mean that man (the anthropologist in me apologizes: forgive the sexist language ladies) is worth saving, has value within himself, has a reflection of his Creator in himself, is capable of good actions? If this is what we mean by “inherently good” then we don’t have a problem among orthodox Christians, or many religions for that matter. But if it implies universalism, that salvation is unnecessary, or that man can save himself through his utility, there’s a problem. It seems the second definition is the one used most, but I’m never sure if anyone truly believes it, especially after the century we just passed. Those who purport such a definition must have never had a history class, especially an ancient one; conversely, those who decry our days as the last, most evil, are just as ignorant of history.
Posted by
takers |
9:26 AM