Learning, really learning, about the lives of people who have accomplished truly great things can be like inspecting an incandescent light and realizing that there is a burning filament at the heart of it all; something in and of itself very small through which power is surging, slowly consuming it, but filling the space around it with a glow. Like that filament, the people who accomplish great things–not just historically noteworthy things in an amoral sense, but noble and meaningful things–give themselves up to being possessed by the efforts they care too much about to set aside or take long rest from. They are too busy burning with desire and conviction and the yearning to reveal some uncreated glory to really take a lot of time to reflect on themselves and enjoy what they have done and become. The burning filament, even if it was a person, couldn’t step outside the light bulb and enjoy the light that it gives off without turning off the light. It is too preoccupied with the pain and passion that makes it shine to enjoy itself in the way that a spectator might. Its joy is in the burning and the light that is coming through it. There is a sense in which true greatness is self-unconscious. The moment that we become comfortably self-aware and self-satisfied is the moment that we stop accomplishing things. This is how artists flame out.
Tag: philosophy
Sin is always a personal issue
I saw John Mark McMillan and Kings Kaleidoscope in concert this past Saturday, and I want to share a little bit about that. Tomorrow is also Friday, which means that I will have a roundup of all the new music to do, so the concert review may have to wait until Saturday. At any rate. For now I want to spend a few moments on the subject of how God’s personal
God’s word doesn’t teach us that goodness and justice are abstract concepts out there in the universe to which God is accountable. The view of God that we get from Scripture is that goodness and justice and are attributes of His character, that they come from Him and originate from Him. If there was no God, there would be no goodness. If there was no God, there would be no such thing as justice. Moral goodness and justice are personal rather than abstract. All that we will ever experience of goodness and truth and beauty depends on the reality of God, and as a result, God Himself is the standard of what is good and true and beautiful. Goodness, truth, and beauty are because God is, because I AM is I AM. (This is not a doctrine I’m going to explain or defend in detail at the moment, although I probably will attempt to do so at some point.)
Now the most common objection that is thrown up against this is that it makes goodness arbitrary in its contingency on the will of a person, i.e. that God could do whatever He wanted, or expect of us whatever He wanted, and we would be under an obligation to think of it as good, even if it were to go against what we know to be good. But this is actually faulty for two reasons. One, it involves a subtle error of begging the question, re-asserting the very premise that is being challenged (that goodness is an impersonal absolute abstract “out there” to which God is accountable) in order to attempt to prove that premise. Everyone has presuppositions–indeed, it is impossible to begin thinking without them–but we can’t think that restating our presuppositions is the same thing as an argument. But the second and bigger mistake is that it involves a misunderstanding of what Christians are saying when they say that God is the standard of goodness. We are not saying that God decrees what is good, and that good and evil are contingent upon His say-so. We are saying that God is what is good, that goodness is His character, that everything He decrees is consistent with His character, and that one of the other important attributes of His character is that it is immutable, i.e., it never changes. That is very different than setting up the world as contingent upon the say-so of a capricious being that might say or think anything. It does, however, mean that God is accountable ultimately to Himself, and not to us. (Hebrews 6:13) For God to be good is simply for God to be true to Himself, because He is good. However, we are creatures, and on top of that, sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God, which means that we need something more than merely to be true to ourselves in order to be good. We need redemption, and we need to be true to the one who has created and redeemed us.
Where I am going with all of this is to make the point that sin is always a personal issue. When God confronts us about our sin, He is not confronting us about violating a law out there that He has the responsibility of protecting. He’s not coming to us saying, “Hey, I wish this wasn’t necessary, I really hate to break it to you, but I’m responsible to uphold the law here and you’ve blown it.” On the contrary, He is confronting us about the way we have personally violated Him. Every sin is a personal violation of God and that is what makes it wrong. It is precisely because He is immutable goodness that He must punish sin. He could either punish it or go along with it, and He cannot and will not go along with it. Repentance, also, is not about us making things up to a standard of goodness. Repentance is about us leaving sin for God, because to move toward God is to move away from sin. When God disciplines us (which is a very different thing from punishing us, as we will explore some other time), He’s not dealing with us about the way we have gone astray from some standard out there. He’s dealing with us about the way we have gone astray from Him, to urge us and help us to see the need to come back to Him, because He wants us to live with His goodness flowing through us.
~Andrew
Puddleglum’s Wager
I made a reference in my last post to someone named Puddleglum. I’m having a hard time falling asleep at the moment and looking for a good use of my time, so I suppose I’ll put to page some thoughts concerning Puddleglum and his statement of faith upon which I have been ruminating for some time.
First of all, who is Puddleglum? For those who don’t know, he is one of the main characters in C. S. Lewis’s fantasy novel The Silver Chair, which was the fourth to be published of the seven Chronicles of Narnia (although, according to the chronology of Lewis’ Narnia fantasy, it is the sixth book to take place). Puddleglum is a Narnian Marsh-wiggle, which is to say that he is a lanky marsh-dwelling humanoid with an overall greenish complexion and webbed feet and hands. Puddleglum, like all Marsh-wiggles, constantly gives voice to a very gloomy and pessimistic outlook on life, as though he were expecting the worst possible outcome in any given situation. In spite of this, in the course of events he paradoxically reveals himself to be the one person most to be relied upon for holding on to hope when hope is hardest to get hold of.
(spoiler alert! the following includes a revelation of some of the most significant plot points and dialogue from The Silver Chair.)
When we come to chapter 12 of The Silver Chair, our friend Puddleglum has, along with two children from our world (named Eustace and Jill), been for some time engaged in a difficult and troubled expedition in search of Rilian, the lost prince of Narnia. At long last, Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill have succeeded in discovering the lost prince, who is held captive in the underground kingdom of an evil enchantress styled the Lady of the Green Kirtle, but more properly known as Queen Jadis. No sooner have they set Prince Rilian free from the enchantments which have been used to make him a captive and a slave than they are confronted by Jadis, who attempts by her powerful spell to make them all slaves together. Her spell is so powerful that she is able to lull the Prince and the two children from our world into forgetting that there is any real world other than her bleak underground kingdom of evil. In this moment of crisis, it is Puddleglum who rises to the occasion. He puts out the Witch’s enchanted fire with his bare foot (giving off a very disenchanting smell) and proceeds to give her defiance with this speech:
“‘One word, Ma’am,’ he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. ‘One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you’ve said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies making up a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if here isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court a once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.'”
I have found in these words something very helpful to stiffen the backbone of my faith in times of trial (which is, no doubt, what their author intended). Puddleglum’s argument is simple. If God and His world isn’t what really is, life without Him is miserable and meaningless by comparison. It’s odd enough that we’d have longings for something that never was or is or will be, but even that aside, if there is no God, no meaning, no reality, then what have we lost by pretending that there is? I’ll wager you, says Puddleglum. If you’re right and I’m wrong, I still haven’t lost anything by pretending; and if indeed you are right, to give up my pretending would be to give up the only thing that makes my life worth living.
This is, I think, a much better wager than Pascal’s. (see Pascal’s Wager at wikipedia.org) Whereas Pascal’s wager is an entirely self-centered bet, Puddleglum comes at us from a very different direction. He says, in effect, “I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. What is it to me if you say that the Lord does not exist? I would rather go on believing Him and living as one of His, because without Him, life is so miserable and empty that there’s no point to it at all. Just look how lame your version of ‘truth’ is,” Puddleglum says. “It’s so useless that I might as well not believe it, because even if it’s true, believing it won’t better my life at all.”
He can say all this, of course, because deep down in his heart, Puddleglum knows not only that Aslan and Narnia are real, but also that Aslan and Narnia are the only thing that matters. He takes the power (and ultimately his friends) out of his enemy’s hands by showing that, even if the Witch isn’t lying, they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by giving in; and if she is indeed telling the truth, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by carrying on as though she is lying. At which point the Witch shows her true colors and turns into the serpent she is. There’s not a lot you can do to someone who says, at heart,
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength[b] of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:25-26)
Those who follow Jesus are constantly being pressured by the world around us to compromise our obedience to Him. Why do we trouble our souls for a fantasy? And while we know that Jesus is so much better than a fantasy, I think sometimes it would do us good to challenge the Enemy’s false version of truth not just on its falsehood, but its uselessness, because Jesus is so much that much better than what they want us to give Him up for that it would hardly matter if He wasn’t real at all. Of course, He is. It just wouldn’t matter if He wasn’t–not enough to make us give Him up. The Lord is our portion. He’s all we have in Heaven and all we have in Earth, and all we really want for all that. As William Cowper wrote:
“But O! Thou bounteous giver of all good,
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown;
Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.”
The substance of Christian devotion is to be able to say that sort of thing with an honest heart. If we can, nothing is going to pull us away from Jesus. If we can’t, something invariably will.
So hurrah for good old Puddleglum! And may God give us the strength to persevere in love like his, which is better than mere faith (I Corinthians 13:13).
Andrew Micah 