God

God’s Handiwork

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Illustration: Yesterday afternoon was beautiful and, as is my custom, I strapped on my backpack, laced up my hiking boots, and headed into the woods and up the hills to hike in order take in as much of nature’s beauty as I could before darkness fell. But it was tonight’s sky that was to be special for a lot of folks. Many took up their cameras, telescopes, and other optical equipment to capture a spectacle in the heavens. Why? Jupiter and Saturn appeared to do a heavenly hug in the firmament. Social media feeds were flooded with pictures people put up of the sight. I saw some people’s pictures that made me fall silent, they were so moving and beautiful. The orbits of Jupiter and Saturn coincided with the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. The sky was as clear last night as I have seen in a long time, too; that added to the power of the whole spectacle.

Scripture: This morning when I was reading, I was reminded of how often the Bible speaks of the heavens:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good (Genesis 1:14-18).

That was from Moses’ pen in Genesis. But King David wrote, too, of God’s creating the heavens and superintending them in the Bible’s poetry. Why? So that we would see how the heavens trumpet their Author:

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).

The temptation is to worship the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). I saw this last night. People who claim to be atheists found themselves marveling at the precision of the heavenly spectacle. They used scientifically crafted optical equipment to gaze upon a heavenly display of awe-inducing power, and yet they were oblivious to the fact that all of this design heralds the glory of the Designer (God). This is why the Bible reminds us:

“And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven” (Deuteronomy 4:19).

Encouragement: As most of us will try to be with our loved ones over the next few days to enjoy Christmas and some holidays, I wonder if we will give thought to this:

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

The planetary display this week was certainly moving, but it was not as important as the incarnation of God. You see, it was not random that the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn coincided, and that we know with precision when this is slated to happen again.

It was not random that God warned us that we sinners too often want to worship the creation rather than the Creator. It was not random or accidental that Jesus, the second Person of the triune God of the Bible, took on flesh in the incarnation “in the fullness of time,” as Paul wrote in Galatians 4.

No, dear readers, none of it was random or accidental, any more than your cameras, and iPhones, and telescopes were random or accidental. They bespeak of the One about whom the whole creation bears witness: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13).

Merry Christmas.

X Marks the Spot

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X marks the spot. And, my oh my, are there lots of spots about! There are Xes on the floors at Walmart. There are Xes at Target. There are Xes at Ingles, Kroger, Costco, QT, Dollar General, etc. When you approach a cashier to pay for goods and services, if you look down near your feet, you are probably going to see tape, paint, or another marker indicating the following: X marks the spot. I don’t know about you, but it gives me what my grandfather used to call the heebie-jeebies. In short, the creeps. The times are a-changin’, Dylan wrote. But this time it is a different kind of cultural revolution. It is not the Vietnam War now; it is not LSD and the hippies now; it is not feminism now. It is a cultural revolution in which the foundation is being dismantled and destroyed. Statue by statue, church by church, zip code by zip code, mayor by mayor, governor by governor, carnage fills the headlines. And one of the great questions to be settled is, What will the new foundation be?

To state what many believe, the West is undergoing a transformation. We are now in a place where an organization like Black Lives Matter has the world’s attention. And the buzzwords and catchphrases en vogue in today’s post-Christian, post-everything culture pervade their website. Here is a section direct from BLM’s website:

We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.

We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be      disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.

We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.

We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.

We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).[1]

Race, gender, “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity” and Communism comprise the majority of BLM’s worldview. As I have read through their website’s resources, it is filled with language of “oppression.”

Individuality is absent; what fills their writing is emphasis upon the group, upon the collective. You are valuable insofar as you are black. Race is key. And if you add certain sexual proclivities, then you receive bonus points, i.e., more value. To simplify it for those who will not do the reading on their own, the worst thing a person can be is white, male, heterosexual, Christian, married, monogamous, and politically conservative. Those are indicators of your status as “oppressor.”

To say that BLM illustrates “identity politics” is supreme understatement. In the absence of the transcendent worldview that teaches that all lives matter (from conception until natural death) because they are created in the image of the infinite-personal creator God, now we live in a world where pigmentation determines people’s worth.

Remember Rev. MLK’s words about the dream that all people would be valued by the “content of their character” rather than the color of their skin? Well, that is rejected by BLM. For BLM, color is what matters.

I wonder why the statistics of the millions of black babies murdered each year don’t find space on their website. Did those black lives not matter? What about the lives snuffed out by black on black crime in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in Oakland, in Detroit, in New York, in Philadelphia, in D.C., and other cities controlled by Leftists? Did those black lives not matter?

My wife and I lost a couple of children several years back. For those of you who have been through the same thing, you know the pain. It is almost indescribable. My wife’s pain through those seasons was horrible to watch. And all I could do was watch, cry, and pray. They remain terrible experiences that scarred us both. Our children’s lives mattered.

But why doesn’t the logic cut both ways for BLM? Where is the outrage at Planned Parenthood facilities being overwhelmingly in neighborhoods where most American blacks live, and aborting generations of black lives? Don’t those lives matter?

Again, look at the numbers: “Since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, abortion has killed an estimated 20 million black babies — more than the entire black population of 1960.”[2]

What will replace the foundation that is being torn down statue by statue? What will replace the foundation that tells people they are valuable because they are created in the image of God who redeems their fallenness through the gospel? What will replace the heretofore self-discipline and Judeo-Christian worldview that informed the Founding Fathers’ worldviews, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence? What will replace the traditional family where moms and dads raised children to honor their parents, to respect all people, to wrestle against their own sin, to think critically, and to honor those to whom honor is due?

Will the moniker be, X marks the spot? Will it be that the West destroys itself from casting off all moral restraint? Will the West degenerate to such a level that the arguments that carry the culture into judgment revolve around “gender identity,” “oppression,” and “identity politics”?

I do not claim to speak for others but I, for one, am long past being weary of wearing facemasks and using hand sanitizer while watching thugs vandalize private and federal property and wreak havoc—and yet, I am somehow the bad guy if I don’t don a mask and stand six feet from my neighbor?

In the biblical worldview, we are to love our neighbors and respect their property, not shame them for something they’re not guilty of. In the biblical worldview, we are to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves. But in the godless Communist world of BLM and Leftism, you see paint being splattered across the nation, riots disrupting civilized life, intimidation, violence, defunding of police, “cancel culture,” and unleashed madness.

The foundations are being dismantled block after block across our land by mobs in black shirts, fattened on vitriol and talking points, but malnourished with regard to self-discipline, love for God, or love of neighbor.

X marks the spot used to mean, at least when I was young, the place signifying you’d landed upon the spot for treasure. This was where the goods were to be found. Now the Xes keep us “distanced,” and suspicious of one another, looking askance at each other, sizing one another up. Really? Has it really come to this—skin colors, critical race theories, gender identities, identity politics, and language of oppressors vs. oppressed? I hope not, folks.

There is a better way. It is not utopian. It is not “progressive.” It tells us that we are all (all!) created in the image of God, but that we have fallen through sin. Yet grace has come in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And glory comes on his terms because of him, to all who respond in repentance and faith. Creation, fall, grace, and glory. How is that for X making the spot? You can stand there and if you do, you will find the foundation whose builder is God, and you will finally be home.

[1] https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

[2] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/since-roe-abortion-has-killed-more-black-babies-than-the-entire-black-population-of-the-u-s-in-1960

 

Three: Theology, a Novel of the Miniscule, & a Tome by Joyce Carol Oates

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This week, I read three very different writers: John MacArthur, Nicholas Baker, and Joyce Carol Oates. One is a Christian theologian and pastor; one is a postmodern fiction writer whose style departs from almost anyone else I have read; and Oates is an American writer who has been prolific since the 1960s.

Below are some thoughts on each book, its main concerns, examples from each that illustrate said concerns, and some questions for reflection.

In Reckless Faith by John MacArthur, published in 1994, MacArthur introduces his theme up front and unpacks it throughout the next 200 pages. He explains how existentialism, subjectivism, relativism, and mysticism have undercut the very foundations of logic and reason. The result has been widespread poverty of proper biblical interpretation:

. . . to say that people can’t reason their way to the truth of Scripture is not to imply that Scripture itself is irrational. The Bible is perfectly reasonable, consistent with itself, true in all its parts, reliable as a foundation for our logic, dependable as a basis for good judgment, and trustworthy as the definitive test of sound doctrine. Because it is pure truth, it is perfectly rational (xii)

And another gem:

We cannot simply flow with the current of our age. We cannot elevate love by downplaying truth. We cannot promote unity by repressing sound doctrine. We cannot learn to be discerning by making an idol out of tolerance. By adopting those attitudes, the church has opened her gates to all of Satan’s Trojan horses. (81)

But the various isms resulting from suppressing God and his revelation of himself in Scripture have led to abuses and misinterpretations that are embarrassing. In his trademark fashion, MacArthur does not pull punches. He quotes from primary sources in his many analyses of existentialism, mysticism, neo-orthodoxy/liberalism, fundamentalism, Roman Catholicism, and more. He traces the trajectory of how many people wound up with such reckless faith.

One example I found particularly helpful was his analysis of mysticism that has infiltrated much of the professing Christian church. Many people are chasing feelings, chasing experiences:

The faith of mysticism is an illusion. “Truth that is true for me” is irrelevant to anyone else, because it lacks any objective basis. Ultimately, therefore, existential faith is impotent to lift anyone above the level of despair. All it can do is seek more experiences and more feelings. Multitudes are trapped in the desperate cycle of feeding off one experience while zealously seeking the next. Such people have no real concept of truth; they just believe. Theirs is a reckless faith. (30)

He ends this book as he ends every book I have read from MacArthur—with a call to the gospel as revealed in Scripture. Scripture is the authority. Many profess that, but deny it in practice. Say what you will about John MacArthur, but I have never seen him equivocate on that: Scripture is the only objective standard—not traditions, not feelings, not “being led,” not visions, not “looking within,” and certainly not popes, bishops, or councils. If you seek clarity, and want an apologetic resource calling you back to living out, not just the sufficiency of Scripture, but also the authority of Scripture, this is a valuable resource. Isms come and go, but the Word abides forever.

A second book I read was a first for me. More precisely, the book and the author were new to me. Nicholas Baker is an American postmodern writer, and The Mezzanine, a short novel about a businessman’s trip up an escalator, and his mental activity during that trip, is, well, amazingly detailed in its attention to the banal, the quotidian, and the everyday. The author’s goal? To show us the superficial ways we so often glide through contemporary life without thinking through things.

Baker’s forays and footnotes (yes, lots and lots of footnotes, even footnotes about footnotes) serve to focus the reader on the things right under our noses and under our fingertips (like the handrail on an escalator, like the feel of a stapler on your office desk, like why shoelaces break at nearly the same time, etc.). Here is an example:

Presently the metal disk that drew near was half lit by sun. Falling from dusty heights of thermal glass over a hundred-vaned, thirty-foot-long, unlooked-at, invisibly suspended lightning fixture that resembles the metal grid in an old-style ice cube tray, falling through the vacant middle reaches of lobby space, the sunlight draped itself over my escalator and continued from there, diminished by three-quarters, down into a newsstand inset into the marble at the rear of the lobby. (103)

 Baker is new to me. I admire his precision in description. I admire his raising the issue of how the quotidian may teach us if we would but pay attention. But, I think Baker suggests herein, we suffer the illusion that we will be happier if we skate along life, carried escalator-like, unbothered by serious contemplation of our mortality. Baker is, in my view, important. He is not, I admit, easy to read; it can be work. But that, I believe, is part of what makes him important to read. If I had to summarize Baker’s aim, it is this question: What happens if we pay attention–stop entertaining ourselves to death–and just stop and pay attention?

The Oates novel I am (still) reading is her 2001 tome Blonde. It is nearly 800 pages, so it is not one I can finish in a day or two. Marilyn Monroe, as most of the world knew her, was really Norma Jeane Baker, and she is the subject of the novel. As readers, we meet her mother, Gladys, her grandmother, Della, the actors at The Studio in Los Angeles during Hollywood’s golden era, and on and on.

I said the subject was Marilyn Monroe. The more I read this novel, I would say the subject is not Marilyn so much as it is the question of what it means to act, to fulfill a role, to don a façade, and what costs are involved.

Norma Jeane Baker lived roles. And I think Oates is exploring that theme, not a small one. Stay tuned.

Reflections on Gaines’ novel, A Lesson Before Dying

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image1Recently I read Ernest J. Gaines’ novel, A Lesson Before Dying. The story is set in 1940s Louisiana. Black vs. white racial tension divided many of the characters in the narrative; the gospel of Christianity united others.

The main character (Mr. Grant Wiggins) is an unmarried, atheistic (at least initially), black teacher of black children in a Louisiana parish. He is persuaded/cajoled/manipulated into the awkward position of helping an innocent black man (Jefferson) recently accused of murder, to discover and embrace the fact that he is a full man, a creation of God, a person of worth.

Why is Jefferson these things? Because he bears the image of God (Imago Dei). The irony of ironies is that Grant himself, at least for most of the story, is a professing atheist.

Jefferson’s discovery of his worth comes through Grant Wiggins, the Jonah-like reluctant prophet, sent with a message of worth. Both men are changed throughout. The lesson before dying? Worth exists because of the Creator. Absent a Creator, worth and values are merely subjective preferences.

What follows is a form providing a brief book review:

  1. Overview
  1. Quotation
  1. Main Idea
  1. Question(s) raised/reflection(s)

Overview:

256 pages of southern literature. If you enjoy Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, Faulkner, O’Connor, Porter, Cormac McCarthy and other southern literary fiction, rest easy. You won’t be required to work that hard. This novel is easy to read.

Motifs of Christian self-sacrifice and atonement for a world in need pervade the narrative. But what happens in a world that does not want God? There’s the rub. The world is in need of those redeeming events but lacks the humility to admit it.

The novel is a solid story of an innocent man condemned by the mob of some racists in Louisiana. The protagonist is a university-educated black man, Grant Wiggins, who is (perhaps?) a professing Christian but who has lost whatever professed faith he had (during his college years), proving, I would argue, he never possessed saving faith/trust to begin with.

Grant returns to his roots in Louisiana, reunites with influential matriarchal figures like Ms. Emma and others, and is persuaded to serve as the advocate for the innocent-but-condemned black man (Jefferson) who is guilty only of being in the wrong place with the wrong people at the wrong time.

Quotation:

 Here is an example of Gaines’ style. In the following paragraph, these are Grant’s thoughts towards the end of the novel re his crisis of faith:

     Don’t tell me to believe. Don’t tell me to believe in the same God or laws that men believe in who commit these murders. Don’t tell me to believe that God can bless this country and that men are judged by their peers. Who among his peers judged him? Was I there? Was the minister there? Was Harry Williams there? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was my aunt? Was Vivian? No, his peers did not judge him—and I will not believe. (251)

Main Idea:

I remember my high school English teaching telling me, “Look for how and when the protagonist changes; that’s crucial.” Great advice that has stood me and other readers of serious literature in good stead. In short, Grant Wiggins changes when he, reluctant prophet though he is, gives life to another by convincing him (Jefferson) that he’s a man, a creature of dignity and worth, a creation of God. The irony is that Grant himself has not believed that until … You see the idea.

Question(s) raised/reflection(s):

 One would be hard-pressed to find one who appreciates serious literary southern fiction more than I. But why the accolades for this novel? It is, I admit, an emotionally appealing novel. A skeptic discovers the gospel and what it means to be human and a creature of worth … rather than cosmic material ephemera. But is that new? No. That idea has been written for millennia via Scripture and via books like Thomas Howard’s Chance or the Dance?

 Writers like J. Gresham Machen, Francis Schaeffer, R.C. Sproul, Chuck Colson, Nancy Pearcey, Larry Woiwode, C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Ron Hansen, and others have addressed this issue of where worth comes from.

There is a reason Gaines’ novel received such attention by another generation of readers. Something in most of us recoils at the pervasiveness of injustice, racism, and cruelty. But unless one is willing to admit that God is the only grounds for objective moral values, any talk of worth and intrinsic value founders unless we will admit the founder and perfecter of all that is true, good, and beautiful.

A Paean for CJ

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FullSizeRenderIt was when I pulled out of the driveway that I knew. I knew I had to write it. Let me explain. She was sitting there with the dogs, watching me pull away to drive south again to Fort Benning for surgery this Thursday. I knew I had to write it. I can get it across on the page, things I don’t say as often or as well as I should—namely, that I am grateful for her, for her steadfastness, for her loyalty, for her feistiness, for her prayer life, for her deftness at organizing our lives, and on and on. I had to write it. To write what exactly? A paean to my wife who makes me better than I would otherwise be.

I learned an awful lot during my seminary years. And one of those lessons came by way of my favorite seminary professor. He was teaching us seminarians about personal discipleship. He was stressing that we could learn lots of theological precepts and still lose our marriages. Then he made this profound remark: “Don’t wait till Mother’s Day to realize if you have a Proverbs 31 wife.” Dr. Cutrer, my professor, could have ended class that moment. He was that gifted in teaching via example.

Proverbs 31:10-31 is perhaps the most obvious set of verses in Scripture where a godly wife is praised. King Lemuel uses synonymous parallelism in Hebrew poetry to make the point of how valuable a godly wife is. Here is just one example from verse 10: “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10, ESV). Pretty straightforward, right? An excellent wife, according to Scripture, is worth more than fine jewels, and this was written circa 1,000 B.C. in an ancient Near East context, so precious jewels perhaps sparkled more in people’s thinking than they might today.

But what made Dr. Cutrer’s lesson for us more poignant was that Jane, his precious wife, was in class with him. She was at his side, serving alongside him to show us seminarians what an enduring commitment looked like. In short, the precept was theological (that God created, ordained, and loves biblical marriage) but also fleshed out in real lives. Theology was not just to be cerebral but incarnational. And that is why I had to write today—not primarily about theology but about my wife. Following are three examples of why I felt compelled to share.

 Example one: I love to work outside in the yard. Where I’m from, folks call it “piddlin’.” It is a catchall phrase. In my case, it usually involves doing something in the soil. From my mom and my maternal grandfather, I inherited a love for the earth—the smell of soil, a love of colors in nature, of flora, of things growing, etc. Some guys like to peruse sports cars; I like to walk through the garden section at Lowe’s, if that gives you an idea.

When I was outside piddlin’, my wife, CJ, pressure-washed both of the decks on the back of our house. We live in the woods, and so spiders and carpenter bees and all sorts of other creatures like to try and stake a claim on the decks of the house. So while I was out in the yard, my wife had gone down to the basement, hauled up a pressure washer, and sprayed off two decks. I don’t know of many husbands who would have complained. This one didn’t. Score one for the Proverbs 31 wife.

Example two: I have a surgery this week at Fort Benning to reconstruct my right shoulder. I’ll be operated on here, and then return to my barracks room to rest and recuperate, and hopefully, return home for a few days of convalescence. No big deal, right? No need for my wife to drive three hours south. Yet when I told her that I was good, that I had a buddy down here who had promised to look after me if anything goes wrong, she got … well, feisty. “Are you kidding me?” she asked, not really wanting any reply I might have offered. “I’ll be there. You’re having major surgery. Do you really think I’m staying home? Good grief, Pirtle.” Yep, not the brightest husband moment. Score another one for the Proverbs 31 wife.

Example three: I was in a church recently where a teacher was teaching on a couple of verses from one of the New Testament epistles. As part of his lesson, he cross-referenced a passage from another letter but when he cross-referenced the second passage, he did not explain the context of the passage at all. The passage was about dietary laws, not about what he was trying to emphasize. And I was troubled because context is crucial. A fundamental rule of correct interpretation is to know, understand, and teach the correct context. Put bluntly, we are never to rip verses out of context. Anyway, I was troubled but I did not say anything until my wife and I were talking after lunch. I told her what had transpired and she asked me this: “Will you just commit to pray about it (talking to the teacher) this week?” She knows I don’t like conflict, but she was right. Not only should I have gone to the teacher, but I should also have been praying and prayerful as I did it. But I had not. My wife was right on both counts and I was wrong. Score another one for the Proverbs 31 wife.

When I pulled away today to drive back down, she was on the driveway with the dogs. She would undoubtedly go in when I pulled away, make sure the kids were okay, straighten something in the house, perhaps read the book she’s working on currently, prep for the coming week, and wait for me to call and tell her I had made it to Benning again.

I have made it here now and reflected some on how much better I am because of her, on how far I still have to go, on how humbling it is to be chastened and loved by one who loves and remains alongside me despite knowing my many weaknesses.

Her parents (my in-laws) I have grown to love and respect more with each passing year, and two of the greatest blessings they gave this world were daughters, both of whom love the Lord. They (my in-laws, sister-in-law, and wife) know, too, that Proverbs 31 is not just for Mother’s Day homilies. It’s for us stubborn, sinful husbands who don’t tell you enough that you are more precious than jewels.

Carson McCullers, the Heart, and a Question of Fellowship

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Biography is defined as the story of a person’s life, either in whole or in part. A few years ago I discovered that I was reading a lot of biographies. Certain authors and thinkers intrigue me. It’s seldom I agree with all of what they write and/or create, but because I fear superficial knowledge, I try to read all of a writer’s works.  It seems only fair to do so in order to evaluate his/her worldview.

Recently I read several bios of Winston Churchill, Katherine Anne Porter, and Emily Dickinson. Each led me into deeper appreciation for those writers’ lives and accomplishments. Over the last several weeks I have been rereading the works of Carson McCullers and two biographies of her, too. One is by Savigneau and another is by Carr.

Readers, if they have heard of McCullers at all, tend to know of her novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. That was the first of her works I read, too. When I was seventeen and a freshman in college, I read that novel over the course of a few all-nighters. Back then, I kept vampire hours and would read until dawn, then go to classes pale and sleepy for having been up all night reading. Now I go to sleep early and rise early, and I still like The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter–several decades later.

What’s more, I reread novels, plays, and poems that resonate with me. Certain books shape me more than others. I’ve read hundreds, perhaps thousands, of novels and or pieces of literary fiction, but a dozen or so pieces abide. Several Faulkner novels and pieces of his short fiction move me so powerfully that I find myself an apologist for the potency of literature. Dostoyevsky’s grasp of man’s psychology is staggeringly profound. The works of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy seem to me so magnificently crafted I marvel at the literary gifts of their creators. Certain Dickens characters cause me to wonder at his panoramic imagination. Here was a man who created David Copperfield, Pip, Joe, Sydney Carton, and Scrooge, among scores of others.

Literature, the best of it, moves the soul, the mind, the imagination; it makes us see ourselves as creatures wonderful and yet fallen, noble in our capacities to sacrifice and endure, compassionate and yet terrifyingly cruel, as exiles from Eden, poor players in search of (and often in rebellion against) ultimate reality.

Faulkner wrote of this power of great literature in his Nobel Prize Address. He wrote of what the serious writer/poet does and why he does it:

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

In her novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter McCullers has a character named Doctor Copeland. He is a black doctor in the South (Georgia) in 1930s and 40s. He is an intellectual. He’s introverted, a reader of philosophy, and a good man. But he is lonesome. His heart is a lonely one. He,  like the friend whose death he mourns, longs for connection. His friend had been Mr. John Singer, a Jew living in the South, another exile and stranger, who had committed suicide after his (Singer’s) friend had died. Listen to how McCullers suggests what her novel explores—namely, man’s isolation from man, and a longing to reconnect what has often fallen apart (spiritual fellowship):

“But truly with the death of that white man a dark sorrow had lain down in his    heart. He had talked to him as to no other white man and had trusted him. And the mystery of his suicide had left him baffled and without support. There was neither beginning nor end to this sorrow. Nor understanding. Always he would return in his thoughts to this white man who was not insolent or scornful but who was just. And how can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?”

Death teaches us—if we will listen—that this universe is not the way it was originally. To use biblical language, the universe is under a curse. God told our first parents, “[C]ursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;” (Gen 3:17). Why? Because of our sin. And Paul, thousands of years later, continued that theme in Romans 8: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (8:22-23).

Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores this idea of being cursed with groanings/longings/yearnings impossible to satisfy just by way of our fellow men. Instead we see characters take their own lives. We see characters that are deaf and mute—symbolic conditions for man’s inability to communicate sufficiently, his inability to cure his spiritual loneliness.

This brings me to what I relearned in reading McCullers’ work, and reading bios of her life as an artist. We do long for fellowship; we do labor under a curse; we do long for redemption. We do long to have our hearts satisfied. And great literature can call attention to these great themes. But what if it is true what Solomon wrote? In Ecclesiastes, Solomon wrote, “he [God] has put eternity into man’s heart” (Eccl 3:11a).

When I read wonderfully talented writers like McCullers, very often they’re adept at seeing the tragedies in life. For McCullers, she spent her short lifetime writing about the loneliness that plagues mankind, whether we admit it to others or not. But what she and few other wonderfully talented writers less often embrace, however, is the One who came so that all that was cursed because of sin and the first Adam will be made right through the second Adam: Jesus. He knows the longing for eternity in our hearts because he placed it there.

Is That All?

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Physicist Stephen Hawking died this week. He was well known for his 1988 book A Brief History of Time. He also had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and spoke via sophisticated electronic circuitry designed to enable him to communicate. Hawking tapped into a larger popular audience than academia normally affords. His voice is even heard on the Pink Floyd song, “Keep Talking,” on their 1994 The Division Bell album. I remember reading Hawking’s book a few years back. Though my academic background is in philosophy/theology and literature, I read Hawking’s book because of the theological and philosophical assertions he made. He wrote about design in the universe. He wrote about morality. He wrote about purpose. Yet he was a committed materialist. He rejected the idea of a transcendent God who created the universe, the laws of nature, and the laws of logic. He rejected the one who sustains the creation by the word of his power.

In a 1988 interview with Der Spiegel, Hawking said, “We are a just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.”

Interesting how a man who spent his life studying the cosmos, the origin of the universe, the complexity of information in the universe, the existence of mind and matter, etc. rejected the author of all this. An “advanced breed of monkeys” does not encourage me to place credibility in your “thought.”

It reminds me of Richard Dawkins in his 1996 book River Out of Eden. Dawkins wrote, “DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.” Dawkins, too, is referenced in popular music, but this time it is via the Eagles, not Pink Floyd. In the song, “Long Road Out of Eden,” from their 2007 album of the same name:

Silent stars blinking the blackness of an endless sky

Gold, silver satellites, ghostly caravans passing by

Galaxies unfolding and new worlds being born

Pilgrims and prodigals creeping toward the dawn

And it’s a long road out of Eden

Hawking and Dawkins both taught we’re random collocations of atoms, here by chance, for nothing, going to nothing, and our values are subjective and foundationless, ones we choose. What else could values be if there’s no God? As Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, if God doesn’t exist, everything is permitted.

But is that all? Is it possible that Hawking and Dawkins stepped out of their lanes as physicist and biologist respectively?

What if God has spoken? What if “the heavens declare the glory of God,” as Scripture says in Psalm 19:1?

What if human life is created in the image of a loving and sovereign God (Psalm 139), who knows the very hairs of our heads (Matthew 10:30)?

What if there is a sovereign superintending creator who has “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of [our] dwelling place, that [we] should seek God, in the hope that [we] might feel [our] way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26-27)?

Ask yourself: Is that (the world described by Hawking and Dawkins) all there is?

If we are intellectually honest, I would argue there is much evidence for God—not against him.

Materialists (like Hawking and Dawkins) chose to suppress that evidence by attributing it to natural law while denying the cause of those laws. They caricatured God.

Rather than admitting all of the evidence for him, they created red herrings and used non sequitirs. The universe itself, our consciences, objective moral values, mind, language, laws of logic, etc. bear witness to God.

An empty tomb in Israel does, too—so powerfully, in fact, that even stones cry out to the reality of the God who is (Luke 19:40).

 

 

 

Down at the Creek

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“Careful!”

“I know, Dad.”

“Watch for the moss on those rocks. It’s deceptive. Slick, son. Please be careful.”

“Dad, I know.”

I watched my 10-year-old descend to the fast-moving creek below. Gray granite stones, many times bigger than we were, jutted from the north Georgia hills, some at incredible angles. Often they had carpets of green moss on them, especially if they received little direct sunlight or were near the water.

As I watched my son, I thought he scuttled. “Slow down!” I wanted to yell at him. He stepped on one massive gray stone, then another, then another, until he reached the bottom. He stepped onto the bank of the creek.

From twenty feet above I watched my son. With one foot on the rocky bank, he leapt onto stones that protruded from the creek bottom. At last he was on the other side of the creek from me, looking up at me. He had his hunting knife in its sheath in his right hand. He held it up, pointing it skyward, as if to say, “Dad, see. I didn’t drop it.”

“Dad, come feel this water. It’s freezing!”

It wasn’t freezing, of course. My son, after all, was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes. And I was in shorts and hiking shoes, with only a t-shirt and my favorite cap on. It was probably fifty degrees outside, but when I did climb down and meet him in the creek, we dipped our hands in the cold north Georgia water. We felt the water together. The afternoon sun struck the creek, and reflections from quartz, mica, and shale flashed from the waves. The stones, though silent, spoke.

Once down, there was only one thing to do, and that was go up the other side. I waited to see if my boy wanted to lead. The other side was just as steep. Slowly I began scaling my way up by way of stones and by pulling on the laurel limbs that surrounded us.

My son found his own way up, too. When we both arrived at the ridge where we could see down to the creek again, we paused, caught our breath, and felt the presence. Of what exactly?

It was really just a walk through the woods within a mile of our house—woods that are filled with whitetail deer, black bears, coyotes, hawks, and more squirrels than one can count. But we did not see them this day. For my son, he saw time with his dad, climbing massive stones up and down on a sunny March afternoon, and descending steep creek banks to play in the creek. I felt analogous things, too, but also perhaps some things about time, some things about how beauty is not a cosmetic we purchase. I understood something about beauty being inseparable from God, about beauty calling one to praise him for his benedictions.

The Secular or the Savior?

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Are you old enough to remember when government schools released students for Christmas holidays and Easter holidays? Those terms have now been replaced with winter break and spring break. And Thanksgiving is being replaced by fall break. Do you think those replacements are accidental? They are indicators of the secular worldview and of paganism being the all-but-declared religion of the West.

What will be the endgame of a culture given over to the secular worldview? Is there reason for hope in the secular worldview? Does paganism deliver on its promises of progress?

Do not be deceived; we are incurably religious. We will worship someone or something(s). The question is whether we will worship the Creator, the one true and living God, or if we will worship ourselves (creatures)–that is, the earth (the creation).

Recently I heard a fine sermon on Psalm 19. Called by C.S. Lewis the finest poem in literature, Psalm 19 is typically divided into two major parts. The first part describes God’s general revelation of himself through his created order (cosmos). The second part describes God’s special revelation of himself through his Word.

David wrote that God reveals himself to us, his creatures, through creation:

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world (Psalm 19:1-4a, ESV)

What is that poetic language teaching? It’s straightforward—namely, that the firmament, the heavens, trumpet and herald this message: God is. The stars, the planets, the galaxies, etc. fill the mind and soul with wonder and cause us creatures to declare in response, “This has to be of God.” Randomness, chance, accident, billions of years, etc. cannot begin to explain the glory of what we behold.

And yet the slide into the secular pit continues. Why? Is it because God has not given enough evidence? Is it possible that it’s not lack of evidence for God’s existence that has led to the larger culture’s embrace of secularism and paganism? Is it possible that it’s much simpler—that, in fact, it’s a moral issue? What if it came down, in fact, to suppression of the overwhelming evidence of God’s existence?

According to Scripture, our consciences bear witness to God’s law written on our hearts. Our consciences either accuse or excuse our behavior: “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Romans 2:15, ESV).

And yet the slide into the secular pit continues. Yet we have general revelation (the cosmos), and we have special revelation (Scripture). Moreover, we have consciences that accuse and/or excuse our behavior.

But ultimately we have God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, who, according to one of Christianity’s greatest creeds, was “conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.”

And yet the slide into the secular pit continues. Despite the heavens declaring the glory of God; despite the millions of Bibles on dashboards of vehicles or on coffee tables in homes; despite our consciences that prick us when we know we’ve violated the moral code; and even despite the Lord Jesus, whom the secular pagan world hates, but cannot get rid of. Where’s hope or salvation in secularism and/or paganism?

Despite the Dan Brown novels; despite Richard Dawkins’ tirades; despite Sam Harris’ vitriol—somehow this Jesus resurrects and outlives his enemies. And somehow the Christian church, so maligned by the increasingly secular and hostile culture, gathers across continents regularly, as a ransomed bride, and professes the faith of the gospel of grace–that Christ has died, that Christ has risen, and that Christ will come again.

 

Thanksgiving, a Pop Song by the Police, and Your Mind: Worldview in Microcosm

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“When the world is running down/You make the best of what’s still around.” That’s the refrain in a pop song from a very popular band, The Police. That line reveals a lot about the theology and worldview expressed in the tune of the same name. This week, many Americans will celebratthe Thanksgiving. What Americans believe about God will be evidenced in what we do/don’t do this week. Will we pray or not? Will we express thankfulness? To whom? To ourselves? To our predecessors? To our nation? Our military? Why? These questions go to the heart of the matter. If we are thankful, does that thankfulness not assume there is someone to whom to be thankful? It personalizes the act of thanksgiving. Ought we to be thankful to someone? How you answer that question reveals much. Ought implies a moral imperative. It is a way of saying, there is a right standard, a way man ought to follow. But we’re in a day when many will gather together and be at a loss as to whom they should thank. In other words, they’re cut off from the author of life (God), the only One to whom we ought to be supremely grateful.

Antithesis. Literally, the term means “against/opposed to another argument/idea.” Does that sound too sophisticated of a term? I hope not. It’s simple. In informal language, it’s the other side of the coin. It’s a way of saying this vs. that. This way, not that way. God or Satan. Good vs. evil. Justice vs. injustice. Truth vs. lies.

Antithesis is a mark of thinking. Thinking conceptually is predicated upon one’s thinking via antithesis. In other words, the person who cannot make distinctions cannot properly be said to be thinking conceptually. Here’s the upshot: either we’re in a theistic world (where God is sovereign Creator and we’re His creatures) or we’re not. It’s one or the other. Either we are to thank the God who is, who has spoken, who upholds all things by His sovereign power, or we are cosmic accidents who cannot even begin to explain why things exist, why we’re here, why morality is not an illusion, or how nothing gave rise to everything, all the while undirected.

What does that have to do with Thanksgiving? A lot. Ever had this experience? A family gathers in the kitchen or dining room, and someone is called on to offer a prayer of thanksgiving. But do we think about that? Whom are we thanking? It does not make sense to thank randomness/chaos/nothingness. Are our talents our own? Is our strength our own? Is our wealth our own? Our health? Are we in control of seedtime and harvest? Did we control the gifts of our children?

This is just where we need to understand antithesis. If we do not come to terms with the concept of giving thanks, we are eschewing intellectual courage and honesty. This morning, I listened to a fine sermon by my pastor from Psalm 16. It was about, among other things, how believers recognize that we have no ultimate good apart from God. David wrote, “Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the LORD, “Your are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” (Psalm 16:1-2, ESV). David recognized that he was to thank God. Why? Because God is the author of life; God is the fount of blessing. In short, life without God is unthinkable. This is the perfect example of why it’s crucial for us to think via antithesis. Either God or an idol. God or Baal/idolatry. Theism or atheism. Pushed logically, how can the atheist justify being thankful, if he/she believes he came into being accidentally, cannot explain purpose, meaning, or origins? Why ought the atheist be thankful if there’s no one to thank?

Was Sting right? If the world is running down, should we just try to make the best of what’s still around? That’s pretty sad. What would it take for you to consider that the reason the world is running down is because we live this side of Genesis 3? What if this world is running down because we are moral rebels from God, trying to cover our sin? What if the world is running down because the whole creation is groaning from shaking its fist in the face of the God who loves the creation enough to take on flesh and come for all who will repent and believe upon Jesus?

The antithesis is this: either God is, and we ought to honor Him as such or we’re on our own, and the jig is up. Either God has spoken through creation, through Scripture, through conscience, through design, and through Christ and His resurrection, or He hasn’t.

The apogee of this antithesis finds many illustrations in literature, but perhaps none is more familiar than Macbeth’s lines: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more. It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing” (5.5.25-28).

Is life (is your life) a tapestry woven by God or a tale told by an idiot? This is why thinking antithetically is crucial. Let us think with honesty, with logical consistency, with humility, but let us think and then act with conviction. And, yes, Happy Thanksgiving.