Faith and History
But it has been so long since the time of miracles. I read about miracles today, but I guess I’m not sure I believe the stories. Why has it been so long since God “showed up”?
Yesterday, a friend encouraged me: History and faith are closely intertwined. He held his hands up and interlocked his fingers. Look at the ancient Israelites. See how they valued their history!
It is true. They were constantly recalling and looking back through memory and ritual and the sacred books.
Is it different for us?
I am reading a book about the Dead Sea Scrolls. We have real connections with the past. Through things like these we can reach out and touch the past, almost feel the sand between our toes.
Two thousand years, they sat in those dry caves in the wilderness, hidden, waiting for us like a patient friend. They are alive. They speak. Like a portal, we can look through, more than look, we can experience.
But today… what about today?
Their faith rested on the past. Can mine?
A Revelation About Atheists
I just had a revelation about atheists, at least some of them.
I have been trying to figure out how they can come up with the meaning of life apart from God. A few weeks ago I read an article by Kieth Augustine here, and I could not figure out his arguments. I could not see how he believed he had derived a satisfactory meaning of life. He had come up with no purpose to life, only meaning which he seemed to be equating with pleasure. Then today I figured it out. I read this article on the meaning of life by Richard Carrier, and I realized where these guys are coming from. I am surprised I did not see it sooner: These guys are existentialists. Carrier even links to Albert Camus at the end of his piece. Meaning is only attainable apart from reason. You have to leap to what Francis Schaeffer calls “the upper story,” where reason does not apply. Reason cannot provide meaning. Such things are purely subjective and attainable only by leaps of faith.
Now, I am not saying that such meaning has no value or is not “real” in some sense. I have been interested in Kierkegaard myself. I am just happy that I have figured out where these guys are coming from.
But I wonder, why they don’t call themselves existentialists as well as atheists? Maybe they do and I just haven’t seen it, but I wonder if they don’t know it themselves.
There is such a thing as a fly.
You don’t usually get to look at a fly up close. They are so wary, so quick. But today I was out in the woods working, tying flagging on trees to mark the wetland edge. It was cold out. Too cold for insects.
As I reached up to tie a pink-glo vinyl ribbon on a small maple, I spotted a fly. Its hershey kiss-shaped head–I had never noticed before, the hairy greenish shield on its back, the delicately folded wings, its intricate, mechanical legs. The low November sun was gently shining on the side of the tree giving just enough warmth, and the fly was lethargically climbing up the flaking gray bark past patches of pale green lichens.
Maybe this all came about by chance. Maybe it’s all just a grand equation that somehow actualized itself ito existence. But if it is, then what is this fly? If it is, then why is this fly wonderful? If its all just chance or equations, the fly is not wonderful. It is nothing.
But it is not nothing. The fly is a fly, and it is wonderful and beautiful. There is such a thing as beauty.
Is the meaning of life a meaningful question?
What is the meaning of life? This is an age old question, and one that we try to flippantly brush off, thinking we can dispel it with a wave of the hand and semantic tricks and definitions. But it cannot be so easily dismissed. Indeed, there is a reason it has hung on so long. It is a question rooted in our deepest parts.
It cannot be answered by pointing out that events in my life have some meaning apart from God. There is no doubt that painful or pleasurable experiences have meaning in some sense regardless of whether there is a God. These events are “meaningful” to me at the time they happen, and I will arrange circumstances to prevent pain and increase pleasure. But this is not the age old question. The age old question is whether there is a higher and deeper level of meaning, a purpose of life that goes beyond pleasure and pain.
Neither can this question be answered by making up a meaning. If I make up my own meaning and purpose, then it isn’t really higher and deeper than my own pleasure and pain, and this is what the human soul really longs for. We feel like we are part of something greater and deeper. We feel like we must have significance that goes beyong pleasure seeking and immediate experience.
It is not really a question of whether there is any sort of “meaning” at all in life, it is a question of whether there is any transcendent meaning, anything more than my own pleasure. The reason that the question has stuck around is that if there is no such higher meaning or purpose, then something is missing, something we feel should be there.
It is the difference between fighting in a war for one’s country or commrade, and fighting in a war for some pleasurable gain. It is the difference between being a random piece of metal, and being a tool, fashioned and used for a purpose. It is the difference between loving your wife and having casual sex. It is the difference between man and beast.
I think the only way that there can be such meaning is if there is a benevolent person behind the universe. Having a purpose implies a purposing person, and the meaning comes from our relationship to that person. If not, then I don’t think there can be meaning in the sense in which we mean it when we say “What is the meaning of life?” if there is a personal God, then we can live our whole lives knowing that we have a purpose designed by him, and this is the only thing that can fill the hole in our soul. Nothing else will, whether hand waving or mind tricks or pretending.
Sure, we can derive some meaning from our relationships here on earth, but we realize that these are really without any higher purpose apart from God. These are simply pleasure seeking apart from a purposing creator. What the human soul longs for is something larger, and these earthly relationships only have real meaning in the larger context.
It doesn’t do any good to demand watertight logic and definitions. Logic and words can’t fill the hole, they can’t wash away the emptiness and the ache of life without God. The words are said, the sophistry and rhetoric poured out, but the gap remains, yawing from the ancient depths of humanness. It is a God shaped whole.
My Life as a Birdnest
Sometimes, when I try to cast a lure out into the pond with my open reel fishing pole, I do something wrong. Maybe I don’t hold my thumb right or I don’t release at the right time, I don’t know, but the result is a mess of tangled monofilament known by fisherman as a “birdnest”.
I realized the other day that I am a birdnest. I am so screwed up that I am inextricable. I cannot even find a loose end. There is no indication of where to begin untying this knot. When I think about how to solve the problems in my soul, I see that it is hopeless.
This, I suppose is why they say:
I hope that this is why He said:
“Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor”
Seeing Cells and Another World
I’ve been teaching biology again this year. I had forgotten about the cells. I had forgotten how the students struggle to see them. At first, when they look through the microscopes at the cells on the slide, they will draw scribbles and dots, or at best, circles with scribbles inside. It is only after they learn about the cell, after I show them by projecting a picture on the screen and pointing out the parts, that they can draw a half-way decent picture of a cell.
This is a good example of a Kuhnian paradigm shift.
I am convinced that they live in a different world now. A world that includes cells.
My Life as a Whirligig
I have been thinking about how it would be to live without God. As I was out working in the woods last weekend, I imagined that it would be like being a spinning whirligig on one of those big rolling ball kinetic sculptures, like the great “Archimedean Excogitation” by George Rhoades at the Boston Museum of Science. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I remember balls rolling down tracks, spinning little whirligigs and ringing bells, like a giant Rube Goldberg machine that, in the end, does nothing. I think this is how life would be if there were no God. The universe is a great kinetic sculpture, with incomprehensible numbers of “rolling balls” on invisible tracks, and uncountable numbers of spinning wheels and ringing chimes, and no point, no end, no purpose. And I am a tiny spinning part on the great machine, perhaps a wheel that spins when a ball rolls by, not even an integral part. Whether I am there or not, the balls keep rolling. But I spin. I just spin when the balls roll by.
Of course, Mr. Rhoades marvelous sculpture is not meaningless or pointless, but that is because he made it, no doubt, with some point in mind, or at the very least, it speaks of his personality. The great universe without God, however, had no sculptor, and so has no point. So I go on spinning, balls roll by, cogs click, and there is no one out there even to admire the sculpture.
