Death Be Ye Not Proud

With Halloween fast approaching, I've been contemplating humanity's obsession with death. Regardless of the era, culture, or ethnicity, part of what makes us human is our ability to ponder future states of affairs. Rather than simply living on base instinct that drives our day-to-day decision making processes, human beings are capable of reason, and, as such, have often wondered what really happens when we shuffle off this mortal coil, so to speak.

Some cultures employ a shadowy agent of the grave, who comes and gathers or transports souls to the world beyond. Some stipulate a resurrection, whether in a positive light, such as the Christian heaven or the Hindu reincarnation, others in a more ghoulish light, such as vampirism or zombification. Some believe that there is no life beyond this life and that when we die we simply cease to exist.

In many ways, death is the driving force of life. The thought that our time is short makes us accomplish more, in the hopes that our dreams will be fulfilled before we are dust. It seems that without death, life would be fairly meaningless. Death and life have a sort of co-eternally necessary descriptory nature, similar to light and dark, cold and hot, or right and wrong. All of these words require at least knowledge of the other word in order to be fully understood. It would make no sense to say that it is dark if we didn't know it could be other than dark, and cold is not something we can fully understand if we've never felt heat. To say that it was right to do something would mean nothing if there were not things that it would have been wrong to do.

In an odd way, death teaches us a lot about what life means. There are few things as formative in the life of a child as realizing for the first time that nothing lives forever. Death can be a comfort for some, while others struggle to delay it for as long as possible. And yet, ultimately, death becomes the great equalizer: no matter your social status, no matter your ethnicity, no matter how beloved you are, no matter how many people despise you, no matter whether or not you've lived a "good" life, death claims us all, from the mightiest emperor to the lowliest beggar on earth. When it comes, the best you can hope for is a chance to say goodbye and look back on your life without too many regrets.

"The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness."

Loves Like A Hurricane, I Am A Tree Revisited

Back in January, I heard a song. A song that I blogged about. Since then, this song has spread at near-viral speed, sweeping the airwaves, and even being recorded by David Crowder Band. A lot of people weren't very happy with the way I viewed the song. Some thought that it was wrong of me as a Christian to critique worship music, others lauded the song and spoke of how deeply it moved them. Others implied that God would somehow punish me for my disdain. I write this to say, despite the song's increasing popularity, I'm still not interested. And, I figured with how many people are listening to this song now, I might take a moment to better explain why by examining a few of the songs metaphors:

Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

Now, I'm from Oklahoma, and we don't have hurricanes. But, I am aware of what hurricanes are capable of doing, and I'm very uncomfortable comparing God's love to a hurricane. Hurricanes are highly destructive forces that have the potential to obliterate almost anything in their paths. Especially trees. Trees don't gently bend and sway in hurricanes; hurricanes snap trees in half, which means we seem to be implying that God's love is going to snap us in half and send us hurtling through the air, killing anything in our path. I don't even want to think about the "weight of his wind".

If grace is an ocean we're all sinking

Again, being from Oklahoma, we don't have oceans either, but, unless wearing scuba gear, it is rarely the intention of people in the ocean to sink. Drowning in the grace of God seems to imply the same sort of abrasive, violent love from the last hurricane line.

heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest

Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss. I don't know that I particularly need images of teenagers making out in the backseat of mom's car to be associated with the way Heaven and Earth interact. And, again, apparently God's love is out to get us, creating physical situations similar to a heart attack.

So, assuming God's love doesn't break you in half, drown you, or send you in to cardiac arrest, enjoy it.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Unlearning the Half-Truths of Sunday School, Pt. 1

There are a lot of stories in the Bible, that, when we talk about them in church, we seem to entirely change their meaning and intended message. In an attempt to undo some of this damage, I'd like to take a look at some of these stories, and talk about what they're actually trying to say, beginning with Jonah.

Jonah is one of my absolute favorite stories in the entire bible. However, if you think the story of Jonah is about a fish (or a whale), then you are sorely mistaken.

Usually, when people hear the story of Jonah, they only hear about the first two out of four chapters. The first two chapters cover the part of the story that most people are familiar with: God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah runs in the opposite direction, God makes a storm, Jonah convinces the sailors he is with to throw him overboard, and a fish swallows him. After spending three days in the fish, it coughs him up on the shore, and Jonah goes to do what God tells him.

If the story were to stop here, then you would probably say that the story of Jonah is about having the courage to do what God tells us. And, while this is part of the message of Jonah, this is by no means what the story of Jonah is really about. To figure that out, we have to look at the last two chapters.

In chapter three, Jonah goes and tells the people of Nineveh that in forty days God will destroy Nineveh. Without any sort of call to repentance or assurance that this will stop God's wrath, Nineveh repents, and God decides not to destroy the city. Again, if it were to stop here, you might say that this is a story about how obedience to the will of God brings about good things. however, the real meat of the story of Jonah is in chapter four.

At the beginning of chapter four, Jonah is furious. He prays this prayer to God, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

At this point, we could probably uses some context to explain why Jonah is so upset. To understand his rage, you need to understand who Jonah is, and who the Assyrians are. The Assyrians (whose capital city was Nineveh) were some of the most brutal, vicious, and violent conquerors to ever rule the Middle East. Some common practices of the Assyrians to inflict upon their captives were to skin their prisoners alive, cut off various body parts to inspire terror in their enemies, pull out tongues, and display mounds of human skulls. And, in the eight century BCE, The Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So, in all likelihood, they skinned Israelites alive, maimed and dismembered them, and proudly displayed their skulls for all to see before dragging them off to the four corners of their empire, never to return. The Assyrians are solely responsible for the decimation of ten of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Now, one would think that the opportunity to bring tidings of destruction and wrath against the city responsible for the deaths of countless Hebrews would be a joyful task for Jonah. However, Jonah runs away because he knows God. He knows that if he goes and delivers this message, the people will have a chance to repent and be saved. The fact that this is the absolute last thing that Jonah wants is the exact reason he runs in the first place.

After Jonah tells God how he feels, God asks him if he has any right to be angry. Jonah (conspicuously lacking a response to God's question) leaves the city and goes to see what will happen to it, probably hoping that God will change his mind again and Sodom and Gomorrah it to the ground. While he waits, God provides a vine for shade. However, a worm eats the vine, it gets hot, and Jonah is again furious. So furious, in fact, that he states death would be preferable to his current situation.

And then, in verses 9-11, the last verses of the last chapter of the book, we find the true meaning of the book of Jonah. "But God said to Jonah, 'Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?' 'I do', he said. 'I am angry enough to die.' But the LORD said, 'You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?'"

This is the heart of the message of the story of Jonah: forgiveness, even to the point of being able to forgive those who have wrong us in unspeakable ways. I hope you understand how profound Jonah's ability to forgive in order to forgive the Assyrians would have to be. Jonah forgive the Assyrians would be like Jews forgiving Nazis. It would be like the Tutsis forgiving the Hutu. Forgiveness on that level is rarely seen in our world.

The book of Jonah ends unresolved. We don't know from this book if Jonah ever forgave the Assyrians; we don't know from this book how long Nineveh's repentance lasted. All we do know is that God cares about all peoples, even those we might call monsters, and that God is willing to forgive all peoples, even those we might not think deserve forgiveness.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

The Indominable Will To Survive

I've been thinking a lot lately about human nature. Specifically, how well we adapt to changing situations. When faced with tragedy or loss or other situations that profoundly affect the way in which we live our lives, we have learned that either we can adapt our own personal outlook to the changing situations, what could be vernacularized as "rolling with the punches", or, we can shut down.

Now, unless we are fortunate enough to have loved ones around us willing to care for us through difficult circumstances, we will not be likely to have the option of shutting down. So, we, as human beings, do what we have done for all of human history: we adapt, and we thrive.

The human condition, while occasionally terrible and horrifying in it's inhumanity, can also be quite awe-inspiring. No other species we know of has both the mental capacity to understand tragedy and loss and the ability to move beyond it.

During our brief and tumultuous reign as the dominate species on the planet, we have teeter on the edge of extinction multiple times, dealing with Ice Ages, plagues, genocides, and natural disasters, and yet, due to our ability to understand and adapt to our environment, we have survived. But, maybe we're just to stubborn as species to give up and let someone else take over our planet.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Open Letter To Atheists, Agnostics, And All Others Who Fall Into The Category of Non-Religious

Dear Friends,

I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that those who claim to believe in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ so often fail to look anything like him, and I'm sorry that because of this cynicism toward the religious establishment is often the only recourse. I'm sorry that people who picket abortion clinics and constantly harass homosexuals and other members of the counterculture do so with an understanding that it's "what God would want". And, because I too have often failed to live up to the name I have taken upon myself, I apologize for myself.

To those of you hurt by suffering and heartache, I'm sorry that you feel as if God has abandoned you, and that we are alone in a cold and uncaring universe. I'm sorry that circumstances conspiring against you and others have made it so that you find it absurd to believe in a God who is in any way benevolent. I'm sorry that so often your questions seem to fall on deaf ears.

And, sorry as I might be, I cannot promise that it won't happen again. I wish I could, but I would honestly be better off predicting that it will happen again and again, and is probably happening somewhere even as I type. But, two things I can promise: friendship, without agenda or qualification, and my personal attempts to live a life more in line with my adopted father's name.

Humbly yours,
The Wanderer

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

The Nature of Suffering and Grief; Does God Even Care?

My great grandma (my dad's grandma) died on Sunday. She was 105, and while that was a long and full life, she did suffer quite a bit before she died, having trouble breathing and wasting away to what looked like a skeleton with skin. My mom's dad has Alzheimer's disease, and while he struggled with it at first, he has now been reduced to little more than an infant in his mid 80's, and now my mom languishes over why this happened to her father. Her mother has dementia, and loses more and more of her mind everyday. I do not consider any of these people to be bad people. As a matter of fact, they are some of the best people I have ever known.

I have often heard it asked (and occasionally wondered myself) "If there is a benevolent God behind creation, why is there so much pain and suffering?" "If God is all powerful, and he wants good things for us, then why do bad things happen to good people?" Let me preface my examination of these subjects with a disclaimer: I do not know of an answer to these questions that will satisfy anyone and everyone. I also do not believe that this is the sort of problem to which you can simply be told the answer. Like most of life's important questions, I think you have to find the answer for yourself.

As I am a devout theist of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, I am committed to the following three axioms: (1) There is a God. (2) This God is Maximally Powerful (by which I mean that all things which are logically possible and consistent with God's character, God can do), and (3) This God is benevolent. Were I to negotiate any one of these principles, the answer would be simple. Without principle 1, principles 2 & 3 no longer apply, and we are left to our own devices in a cold and indifferent universe. Without principle 2, we have a God who is benevolent and wishes to help, but simply lacks the power to do so. And, without principle 3, we have a God who is entirely capable of helping, but lacks the compassion to desire to do so.

So, how do I reconcile a God who has the power to stop suffering, desire an end to suffering, yet still refuses to bring this end about? Well, there is first a question to be dealt with, and that is to what extent God desires the independence of human beings. And, since God is a God who deals almost exclusively in secret, desiring faith without physical evidence, it would seem that God does not want us to simply have all of our problems solved for us, so, God chooses not to act when God could.

At this point, one might object that even if God doesn't act all of the time, there are times when God should. This leads to a philosophical conundrum known as the Problem of the Pile. I drop a grain of sand on the table. This is not a pile. I repeat with two grains, three grains, four grains, etc., and there is no magical number at which it ceases to be individual grains of sand and becomes a pile. The analogy here is that there is no magically quantity at which the interaction of God becomes too little or too much. Perhaps God chooses simply to err on the side of caution.

Another possible explanation for the seeming inactivity of God is that God is acting, all the time, yet God acts in such minute and imperceptible ways upon the infintecimally complex calculus of existence, that we are simply ignorant of God's constant intervention.

However, of all the ways in which it is possible to interpret suffering, there are some which I deem to be vastly inappropriate, as they are directly inconsistent with the nature and character of God. God does not kill people because he needs more angels in heaven. Nor does God rain down punishment upon the wicked, hoping that they will confess of some secret sin. If anything, our suffering causes God just as much pain as it causes us. I'll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite books on suffering, Lament For a Son, by Nicholas Wolterstorff.

"God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God. It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said that perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor."

P.S. shameless plug: If you have yet to do so, check out my other blog, Rules to Live Your Life By, and my newest blog, Syllabic Restraints.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”

Adulthood

Well, I've been graduated for a week and a half. I have a job, I have my own apartment, and I have bills to pay. And yet, I still don't feel like an adult. I'm not really sure when that feeling comes. Is it something I'll just wake up one day and have? Will I never feel like an adult? Will it come when I get married? Have kids?

And, then there's the question of whether or not a distinction ought to be drawn between being an adult and being responsible. If so, I don't know if really know many adults. If not, then is responsibility an essential part of adulthood? I would like to think so, but I'm not really sure. In the interest of quantification of data, here is a list of things that count for and against my alleged adulthood.

For:

1. I have two jobs.

2. I have an apartment.

3. I pay bills.

4. I fulfill domestic responsibilities (for the most part).

Against:

1. I own hundreds of comic books.

2. I own several action figures.

3. My parents still pay some of my bills.

4. I don't have health insurance.

Perhaps the jury is still out on whether or not I qualify as an adulthood.

“The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.”