Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. ~ Viktor Frankl
I maintain that what most people seek as 'the meaning of life' is found in the maxim that life is gift or an honor, for which we owe something. You say I must be able to prove this so? That I need evidence or irrefutable proof? These requests confound me. This kind of insight is just the kind that cannot be proven without destroying it. For proof removes the need to make a decision. I do not need to decide whether I see a computer right now or not. The fact that I see one imposes itself upon me. I do not have to 'take responsibility' for this belief. But if the quest for meaning in life ends in accepting responsibility, then the act of believing or not believing must also involve taking some responsibility. Some beliefs are imposed, some are chosen.
Dostoevsky said that life in it's essence is about each man realizing that they are responsible for the sins of all men, and all men taking responsibility for the life of each man. Maybe that is foolishness, but it isn't obviously so. What is obvious is that coming to such a realization could never happen by evidence of philosophical argument. It is about insight, and intuition. One has to choose to live this way if one is to know whether the proposition itself is true or not. Faith and action must precede experiencing and perceiving. The religious life is an invitation: "come try things this way", not a coerced obedience. And an invitation of such a kind could never accompany the kind of evidence one gets in science. For by definition evidence like this, when properly understood by a properly working mind, coerces assent.
Atheists and hard agnostics stand around and ask for proof of the existence of God. They demand of the believer that he make some account, give some piece of sense data that will imply or prove that the theoretical posit of God is something that as some predictive efficacy, that helps us make sense of the world as we experience it in our senses. The theist may enter into this kind of practice, and the results of this kind of project can be impressive. They aren't just BS. But as my apologetics project on this blog shows, my approach is vastly different.
For the real question at issue, the belief that needs 'justification' is not whether there is a God per se, but the attitudes, experiences and beliefs that underly this belief. What could it possibly mean that we have to 'respond' to 'life' by being 'responsible'? Life is inert isn't it? It is just a fact that is out there, that has no personality. Unless Frankl is right, and this is truly what the meaning of life IS. In that case life is more than just some inert fact. It is personal, and living, and something to which we can be responsible. What would it mean to be thankful or to feel like one owes a debt for one's life, unless LIFE is itself alive, and very much like a person, and sacrifices and gives to us. A fundamental attitude of thankfulness implies that we are thankful TO someONE, as Bill Vallicella has argued extensively.
So the real issues at hand are whether one must live as one who is responsible to 'live truly', and whether life is a gift for which one owes a debt, whether humor and play can be trusted and lived into fully, and so on. These beliefs and attitudes are foundational to belief in God; belief in God 'supervenes' upon them. But surely all of these propositions are the kind that stand beyond the kind of proof that atheists demand of theists. If an atheist demanded proof of these kinds of beliefs in some kind of debate, wouldn't this seem strange to you? It would to me. Certainly asking for belief in something like GOD in and of itself, as if it were a metaphysical posit removed from some form of life, would not seem so, but when put into a particular form of life, that kind of request for evidence no longer makes sense.
In the end I believe in Jesus Christ because of the way He makes sense of my deepest and most amazing experiences and insights. Most of those experiences and insights were gained through years and years of struggle, self-doubt and examination, meditation, and living and working and dying to myself every day. I could no longer hand you 'proof' of them than I could force you to live the life I've lived. But spiritual experience is strange in that way: until you walk a mile in my shoes, you cannot see what I have seen.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Question of the Day
What are some moments of work and play in your life that have brought you nearer to God and/or Jesus Christ?
Work And The Spiritual
I'm tired. I had a long day of cooking gumbo after a long day of cooking gumbo yesterday. I am physically exhausted, but spiritually exhilarated. I feel God's presence all around me. I am a big fan of the mystical. I believe strongly that one should quiet the mind and seek that place within that is a gift of God's grace: His dwelling place in our hearts. I used to be less inclined to this kind of life, but I see now I was wrong, and that mystical practice is genuinely important. But mysticism must never be an end in itself, but a means to an end. I remain convinced that we encounter God every day in the very fabric of normal life. Hard work, and engagement with the world through service, must always be the primary route by which we seek to encounter God. Mystical practice helps us perceive the truth behind the daily struggles, to see the cosmic forces that are expressed in them. But the struggles themselves remain meaningful and real, and not illusory as some mysticism suggests.
And all around the world, every day men and women seek the face of their God in the grand and special experiences of life, when the true face of God passes them by, embodied within their brother in need, and the daily work of the world. Labor in the name of God, for the greater good is the very form of Christ's continued presence on earth. If we seek the mystical to the disregard of the everyday, we may discover the Holy Spirit within, but we neglect the suffering of our Lord Christ without. And that is to ignore the pain of God, which I have always maintained is so very important.
If you are having a hard time, go out and get the focus off yourself. If you want to see the face of God, seek Christ in your brother. Hard work will focus the mind and free the soul, and you will have better grist for the mill of internal struggle the next time you engage in your meditative practice. Engaging the world while maintaining a monastic attitude towards life is particularly hard, but I think supremely rewarding. Work hard and play hard, be silly and then labor on matters most serious, and the individual moments of your life will be come like a mosaic or puzzle, then when you relax in meditation what you will do is step back and be able to see the overall. It is in that moment you will see God, and have all the evidence you need that the path laid down by the Cross of Christ is true and rewarding.
And all around the world, every day men and women seek the face of their God in the grand and special experiences of life, when the true face of God passes them by, embodied within their brother in need, and the daily work of the world. Labor in the name of God, for the greater good is the very form of Christ's continued presence on earth. If we seek the mystical to the disregard of the everyday, we may discover the Holy Spirit within, but we neglect the suffering of our Lord Christ without. And that is to ignore the pain of God, which I have always maintained is so very important.
If you are having a hard time, go out and get the focus off yourself. If you want to see the face of God, seek Christ in your brother. Hard work will focus the mind and free the soul, and you will have better grist for the mill of internal struggle the next time you engage in your meditative practice. Engaging the world while maintaining a monastic attitude towards life is particularly hard, but I think supremely rewarding. Work hard and play hard, be silly and then labor on matters most serious, and the individual moments of your life will be come like a mosaic or puzzle, then when you relax in meditation what you will do is step back and be able to see the overall. It is in that moment you will see God, and have all the evidence you need that the path laid down by the Cross of Christ is true and rewarding.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Quotables
"The biggest mistake you can make is to believe you are alive, when you are really asleep in life's waiting room"- From the film WAKING LIFE.
The Unconscious Divinity of Jesus
See: Luke 22:35-38, 51-53 & 22:39-46
You know in the Gospel of John, Jesus never actually asks God to 'take the cup' of His impending sacrifice away from Him. He insists that He will NOT ask God to take the cup away. It is an interesting shift from the other Gospels.
In John, Jesus comes off as someone fully aware of all that will happen to Him, and ultimately as one who is in control of everything that is going on around Him. Jesus is rather triumphant throughout, even when facing suffering and death. Not so in the synoptics. There Jesus comes off as very human, as someone halting and internally conflicted. This is especially true of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus seems like a person who is conflicted about what is going on and what He is about to do. The passages listed above include an interesting part of the story of Jesus' arrest. At first Jesus tells his disciples to bring swords with them to the Garden of Gethsemane. It sounds as if Jesus is, finally, going to acquiesce to the desires of His disciples and the Jewish people, and start a genuine military uprising. Then, when Peter cuts off the ear of one of the arresters, Jesus cries 'enough of this', and stops the action, and gives Himself over to certain suffering and death.
I feel like Jesus is not someone who has full knowledge of all that was going on around Him. I have no doubt that Jesus felt like He was the messiah, but I think He was never fully aware of what this exactly meant. He comes off as someone struggling with His self-identity as Christ. It is like He's thinking, "okay, I'm called to be the savior, but what does it mean to be savior?" The temptations in the desert (Luke 4), indicate to me that He had come to see military and political salvation as a terrible temptation. Rather, He went with the Isaiah vision of the Suffering Servant, and made this central part of His 'messianic theology', ie, what He came to believe it meant to be Messiah.
But the temptation to political solutions for the world's problems was a real one, and it seemed to hound Him all the way to the end. These strange passages, which seem so out of place to many Christians, betray an uncertainty within Jesus. It is as if at the end He wavered in His conviction, and entertained political messianic thoughts. When He saw the results of Peter's awkward attack, He snaps back. He stops the whole thing for in that moment He finds his conviction once again: salvation comes through faith in God alone, and political and military uprisings will do more than continue the sickness of the world, rather than cure it.
Many Christians have a problem with this reconstruction because it indicates that Jesus isn't fully aware of His divinity. But I think this is likely true. Jesus throughout His ministry comes off as someone who is thinking, growing, maturing, and coming to a deeper self-awareness as time goes by. Besides, the whole point of Jesus is that God experiences the full range of human suffering and sin. We are supposed to be unable to really turn to God any more and say, 'well you don't know what its like', for God's suffering as a human matches or exceeds our own. And the worst part of human suffering is uncertainty and unknowing. It is the confusion and lack of clarity that suffering causes that truly oppresses us. Nietzsche was right when he said that a man can take any 'how' if you give him a 'why'. The real pain of human existence is suffering without a why, is suffering with a sense of meaninglessness. So if Jesus avoids this pain, then can we truly retain the sense that in Jesus man's plight is brought into the very heart of God, and therefore overcome.
Jesus is, in my view, God incarnate, fully God and fully man. But how this works is a mystery to anyone. It is no more mysterious if Jesus knew He was God than if He did not. Either way, we cannot really fully fathom what the Incarnation is all about (though I think we should try.) In the end the real miracle of the incarnation is what happened on the cross when Jesus, God incarnate, turns to Father, equally God, and says "why have you forsaken me?" In that moment the whole of human life, every aspect and every suffering is brought into the heart of divinity. We cannot blame God for the suffering of the world, for to do this would be to blame the victim. Some deny Jesus is divine in this moment. I say this is a supreme mistake, as I've argued before. Look here and you will see your ultimate unity with God. Here is oneness with the divine. But it only makes sense if the halting, human Jesus we see in the Gospels was what He appeared to be, while also being fully, but invisibly, God.
You know in the Gospel of John, Jesus never actually asks God to 'take the cup' of His impending sacrifice away from Him. He insists that He will NOT ask God to take the cup away. It is an interesting shift from the other Gospels.
In John, Jesus comes off as someone fully aware of all that will happen to Him, and ultimately as one who is in control of everything that is going on around Him. Jesus is rather triumphant throughout, even when facing suffering and death. Not so in the synoptics. There Jesus comes off as very human, as someone halting and internally conflicted. This is especially true of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus seems like a person who is conflicted about what is going on and what He is about to do. The passages listed above include an interesting part of the story of Jesus' arrest. At first Jesus tells his disciples to bring swords with them to the Garden of Gethsemane. It sounds as if Jesus is, finally, going to acquiesce to the desires of His disciples and the Jewish people, and start a genuine military uprising. Then, when Peter cuts off the ear of one of the arresters, Jesus cries 'enough of this', and stops the action, and gives Himself over to certain suffering and death.
I feel like Jesus is not someone who has full knowledge of all that was going on around Him. I have no doubt that Jesus felt like He was the messiah, but I think He was never fully aware of what this exactly meant. He comes off as someone struggling with His self-identity as Christ. It is like He's thinking, "okay, I'm called to be the savior, but what does it mean to be savior?" The temptations in the desert (Luke 4), indicate to me that He had come to see military and political salvation as a terrible temptation. Rather, He went with the Isaiah vision of the Suffering Servant, and made this central part of His 'messianic theology', ie, what He came to believe it meant to be Messiah.
But the temptation to political solutions for the world's problems was a real one, and it seemed to hound Him all the way to the end. These strange passages, which seem so out of place to many Christians, betray an uncertainty within Jesus. It is as if at the end He wavered in His conviction, and entertained political messianic thoughts. When He saw the results of Peter's awkward attack, He snaps back. He stops the whole thing for in that moment He finds his conviction once again: salvation comes through faith in God alone, and political and military uprisings will do more than continue the sickness of the world, rather than cure it.
Many Christians have a problem with this reconstruction because it indicates that Jesus isn't fully aware of His divinity. But I think this is likely true. Jesus throughout His ministry comes off as someone who is thinking, growing, maturing, and coming to a deeper self-awareness as time goes by. Besides, the whole point of Jesus is that God experiences the full range of human suffering and sin. We are supposed to be unable to really turn to God any more and say, 'well you don't know what its like', for God's suffering as a human matches or exceeds our own. And the worst part of human suffering is uncertainty and unknowing. It is the confusion and lack of clarity that suffering causes that truly oppresses us. Nietzsche was right when he said that a man can take any 'how' if you give him a 'why'. The real pain of human existence is suffering without a why, is suffering with a sense of meaninglessness. So if Jesus avoids this pain, then can we truly retain the sense that in Jesus man's plight is brought into the very heart of God, and therefore overcome.
Jesus is, in my view, God incarnate, fully God and fully man. But how this works is a mystery to anyone. It is no more mysterious if Jesus knew He was God than if He did not. Either way, we cannot really fully fathom what the Incarnation is all about (though I think we should try.) In the end the real miracle of the incarnation is what happened on the cross when Jesus, God incarnate, turns to Father, equally God, and says "why have you forsaken me?" In that moment the whole of human life, every aspect and every suffering is brought into the heart of divinity. We cannot blame God for the suffering of the world, for to do this would be to blame the victim. Some deny Jesus is divine in this moment. I say this is a supreme mistake, as I've argued before. Look here and you will see your ultimate unity with God. Here is oneness with the divine. But it only makes sense if the halting, human Jesus we see in the Gospels was what He appeared to be, while also being fully, but invisibly, God.
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