[+/-] It's been a while

Hey.

How ya been?

I was just thinking of you the other day. I thought maybe it's time I talked to you again.

It's strange to think of you being present here, as if I might catch a glimpse of you if I turn my head fast enough. It gives me the sense that you're playing with me, the way a father plays with a small child - outsmarting him, teasing him, nimbly avoiding his uncoordinated efforts to find or grasp. I wonder why kids like that. I suppose the difference is that they know it's just a game. It ends so quickly, and then they touch again. Maybe we'll touch some day.

Be with the ones I love - you know their names. Give them strength in hard times. Give them direction and hope. Teach them to love, and teach me to love them. Let me be a blessing to them, if I can.

Keep me honest. Keep me humble. Keep me gentle. Help me see the garbage in my heart, and help me deal with it.

Don't ever let me forget you, even when I don't believe in you. Let me remember where I've come from, wherever I end up.

Are you listening? I believe you are, somehow. But I don't really know you, so I may be mistaken. If you've been tuning me out, listen to me now. I have something I need to say to you:

Don't you ever let me go.

[+/-] Greater Things Than These

Something that was said in the communion service at my church last week got me thinking. Someone mentioned the passage in Matthew 25 in which Jesus separates the "sheep" from the "goats". Whenever I hear this passage, I think of a similar one in Matthew 7 which seems to say the opposite.

The first passage says that whether we go to heaven or hell depends on how we treated "the least of these". (Absolute heresy, I know. I can't believe we read this in church.) The second seems to say that doing great thing on earth isn't enough to get us to heaven. What matters is whether we are known by Jesus, which is somehow related to doing the will of God, whatever that means. (How could doing miracles and driving out demons not be the will of God?)

After I puzzled about this for a while, it reminded me of 1 Corinthians 13. (Most things do, it seems.) The Love Chapter, as it's called, begins by saying that all the big flashy stuff that we admire - speaking in tongues, prophesy, knowledge and understanding, great faith, miraculous power, sacrificial giving and martyrdom - are utterly worthless without love.

I know this passage well and I love it, and I'm also quite familiar with the "Lord, Lord" passage, but their message is still shocking and counter-intuitive to me. If you could perform miracles, foretell the future or cast out demons in Jesus' name, I'd think highly of you. I'd want you to be my pastor. I'd support your ministry, read your books, quote you and imitate you and praise you to my friends. If you could do this stuff I'd be your disciple and hang on your every word, because you'd have to be incredibly close to God to wield power like that. Right?

Not according to Matthew. In his book Jesus is disgusted with many of whom I would be in awe. These are prophets, miracle-workers and exorcists, and Jesus called them evil-doers and opposers of God's will. But those known to Jesus, his sheep, are workers too - servants of the hungry, the thirsty and the sick, of strangers, beggars and crooks. Why is one group accepted and the other damned?

Both the sheep of Chapter 25 and the evildoers of Chapter 7 were apparently judged according to what they did. Both did things we would approve and admire, and yet one group is welcomed and the other banished. The only way I can make sense of this is that the hell-bound of Chapter 7 got caught up in the flashy stuff and missed the real point. I have no idea how these evildoers had such privileged access to God's power, but it seems that they completely misused it.

Obviously there's nothing wrong with doing the miraculous, after all, Jesus did many miracles during his ministry. But it seems that he thought the compassionate part of his ministry - talking with Samaritans, touching lepers, eating with prostitutes and crooks - was the more important part. Jesus knew that displays of supernatural power stick in our minds ("Jesus - wasn't he the guy who walked on water and raised that dead girl and fed thousands with a handful of bread and fish?") but maybe he thought his displays of extraordinary compassion were the highlights of his ministry.

I've always been pretty skeptical about Jesus' claim that his followers would do "even greater things than these". Sure, the apostles did some cool stuff - healing cripples and whatnot - but that all petered out pretty quickly. I don't know of a single Christian in the last 19 centuries who could hold a candle to Jesus in terms of signs and wonders. But now I wonder if Jesus might have counted feeding millions of hungry kids around the world as greater than feeding five thousand, even though we don't use his miraculous methods. Maybe Jesus' plan to change the world doesn't involve superheroes of faith who move mountains and put the legions of darkness to flight, just a bunch of unremarkable people who do what they can to help the needy.

And maybe it's not the great speakers and healers and the leaders of successful ministries that we should look to for spiritual insight. Maybe it's the ones who are serving soup to bums and hanging out in nursing homes who best understand the heart of God.

[+/-] 20 is the new 13

And here we are. Finally.

I've been wanting to move for a long time, but I had to design a new template (pretty time consuming when you're picky and cheap) and find a good domain name. If you've never created a blog at blogspot, you have no idea how difficult it is to find a good name. If you're horrifically bored some time, try to think up blog names (or e-mail addresses) that someone else hasn't already claimed. This is how it goes: you think of a great name, you type it in, and you get an "address not available" message. Apparently some kindred spirit out there though of the exact same name before you. (Great minds think alike, right?) You type the name in your browser and it turns out that you're kindred spirits with some dork-face who started a blog 2 years ago, posted twice, and was never heard from again. Meanwhile he's hogging YOUR name.

So why did I go with "twentyfeet"? Basically, it was down to that or "thebelligerentplatypusdancesdelicately", which would be kind of annoying to type out. Every other name was taken. The allusion is to a story I wrote a while back, but the name is ambiguous enough that I shouldn't need to change it again in 2 years. I hope.

I'm both pleased with this new template and embarrassed by how much time I put into it. (I console myself that it will all be worth it when I win a bloggie for best design.) So what did you do with your reading week?

[+/-] Is It True Today?

I'm not trying to find reasons to abandon my faith. Really, I'm not. I just can't help thinking about this stuff.

I try to be credulous about religious claims. Because they generally deal with the unseen, personal experience, and things beyond our knowledge, I don't want to poo-poo other's beliefs about God. I've never felt the presence or guidance of God, but others believe they have. And since I'm in no position to analyze these subjective experiences, it's not hard for me to believe that God does interact in tangible ways with some people, in some circumstances. When I hear about miraculous healing, exorcisms, prophecies, and so on, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. And when people tell me God answered their prayer, I recognize that I could never conclusively determine whether this is the case, and choose to trust that such things really happen.

But I find my faith in these things becomes much more difficult when I encounter them first hand. While I still believe (in the absence of any compelling evidence) that God genuinely and tangibly communicates and interacts with people, too often I hear of supposed encounters with God that I cannot help but mistrust. (Again, I'm not saying that any of these encounters are definitely fake. I'm just saying the majority of them seem pretty suspicious.) Similarly, while they sound great second hand, any exorcisms or healing or miracles that I've personally witnessed have been profoundly unconvincing, and done much to damage my faith in those I have not seen. I have no desire to disbelieve in the supernatural - just the opposite - but when I see them first hand or really sit down and think about them, I can't help but be incredulous.

I've struggled for a long time with prayer - its effectiveness, its purpose, its value. I wish to say plainly from the outset that I do not understand prayer, that any ideas I might have about it's mechanics or objectives may be dead wrong, that I have never been able to establish a habit of prayer or a desire to pray, and that I have never been in a position which merited heartfelt prayer for God's intervention (except maybe that one time). So don't tell me that I'm confused or ignorant about prayer; I already know that. I'm seeking knowledge here, not dispensing it.

As I've said above, I've always considered the question of whether God answers prayer not to be provable one way or the other. There are just too many unknowns, too many alternative explanations for both "answered" and "unanswered" prayers. It's easy to dismiss a seemingly unanswered prayer by saying that it was not God's will, that unconfessed sin got in the way, that the one who prayed was insincere, impure in motives or lacking in faith, that we fail to understand the "big picture" of God's plan, that sin and free will restrict God's action, that prayers may be answered in ways we do not expect or long after we've forgotten them, that we do not pray enough, or do not ask enough, or do not work enough, or any number of other explanations good or bad, likely or unlikely. A person such as myself who wants to believe in a God who cares for us, listens to us, and is active in our world will have no difficulty finding explanations and excuses for seemingly unanswered prayers. And never having lost a young child to cancer, never having known unalleviated hunger or sickness, never having struggled with crippling sin or physical disability or large-scale rejection or extreme hatred or cruelty or injustice, I've had relatively little to be disappointed with in prayer. I felt the sting of God's apparent apathy a couple years ago when I asked in vain for him to reveal himself to me, but the nagging questions then were how could God do this and what was I doing wrong, rather than whether God really answers prayer at all. This latter question occurred to me only a few days ago.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the question was prompted by something I read on a web site, and (in my opinion) not a particularly good website. whydoesgodhateamputees.com is a longwinded, multifaceted attack on Christian beliefs. The bulk of the arguments I skimmed through didn't strike me as particularly fair or compelling, but the argument against prayer alluded to in the title caught my attention.

It's not hard to find stories of "miraculous" (that is, improbable) answers to prayer. You've heard them in church, read them in the paper, and deleted them from your inbox. But have you ever heard of someone regaining a lost limb as a result of prayer? Assuming you haven't, do you not find this a little weird? There are countless stories of prayer healing diseases, but none (none!) of prayer regenerating severed limbs. (Or are there? I'd be grateful if you could find me one.) Why does God seem to heal all varieties of illness and infirmity, but never amputation?

I think there are two differences between the regrowth of a lost limb and other healing: it's impossible, and it's indisputable. Diseases, even the most deadly, are not invincible. All (or nearly all) can be overcome, and human bodies have been known to make inexplicable and highly improbable recoveries. But there is no natural possibility of healing for an amputee. Human limbs do not spontaneously regenerate, ever. And while sickness is enigmatic and prone to misdiagnosis and misunderstanding, amputation is black and white. If a woman has one arm today and two arms tomorrow, there can be no question that something inexplicable has occurred. No unknowns, no complicating factors, no uncertainty. And while naturally improbable recoveries from illness occur rarely, naturally impossible healing of amputees occur never. This bothers me.

Real Live Preacher tells of how his faith reached the breaking point as a hospital chaplain in his story (highly recommended). One factor was his realization that sick people tend to live when the doctors say they will live and die when the doctors say they will die, regardless of prayer however fervent, trusting, and persistent. Various sources confirm this. And now that I've really let this sink in, it bothers me.

I'm not saying all this proves anything. (As I said at the start, I don't think it's possible to prove anything about prayer.) But it bothers me. Maybe I've just not had enough good experiences with prayer. I'm sure that stories I chalk up to chance would be much more difficult to shrug off if I had experienced them personally. Maybe I just need to have more realistic (I'm tempted to say "less Biblical") expectations of prayer.

I suppose I should make a distinction between believing in God and believing that he answers prayer. At present I believe there is a God who "works all things together for good" according to his mysterious and perfect will. What I don't understand is why I ought to pray for God to change his will, or how my prayers could be necessary for God to accomplish his will, or why God seems to take great pains to make answers to prayer look like coincidences. This certainly isn't the way prayers were answered in the Bible.

But as usual I'm talking to long. What do you think? What do you believe about prayer?

[+/-] Why I (Am) Like Conservatives

I apologize for my infrequent posting of late. You know how it is - midterms, Olympics, laziness... My primary excuse is that I've been busy setting up my new printwear business. By which I mean fooling around with photoshop. Anyway, you can see the fruits of my labours (and those of my associate, Moses) at wererevolting.com. If you're looking to buy awesome stuff, we can hook you up. But to blogging.

The other day I had the opportunity to hear a good preacher at a College & Career conference. I've heard the man before, and I have a fair bit of respect for him. He's pretty old, quite interesting, and as conservative as all get out. We don't see eye to eye ("What are you doing these days?" "I'm studying philosophy." "Oh no.") but he's a straight shooter, and I like that. The thing about him is he's really into the Bible - he preaches as if every word in that book was hand-picked and assembled by God himself, and oozes meaning. The Bible is God's message to him, and what it says, he believes.

In one of the sessions he led (of which there were many) he mentioned that Christians ought to be more active in fighting the moral decay of our society. Being the left-leaning, tolerant, wanna-be-feminist, philosophistic college-boy that I am, I'm not convinced that our society's morals are declining, and I asked him afterwards to explain what he meant. This lead to a discussion of the "homosexual war" which he feels Christians have "lost much to easily".

The Preacher, through his study of scripture, has come to believe that homosexuality is an abomination in the sight of God, and that nations which condone it are doomed to God's wrath, as were Sodom and Gomorrah. He believes that homosexual attraction is a punishment for great personal sins, that the "homosexual lifestyle" (i.e. promiscuity) is nearly universal among people with this perversion, and that it signifies an abandonment to wickedness so drastic that most people who fall into it (and most nations that permits it) are beyond repentance and will soon suffer God's wrath.

I must interject at this point and say that while I personally believe that homosexuality (not to be confused with promiscuity) is not sinful, I have no quarrel with those who disagree. I understand why many Christians believe homosexuality is wrong, based on its apparent condemnation in the Bible, and so long as they treat gays with as much respect and love as they would any other "sinners", I can respect their beliefs.

But to say that homosexuality is the worst of all sins, a nation-dooming abomination, the manifestation of the most extreme wickedness and unrepentance, is something else entirely. In my head I have a pretty good tirade for people who think this way, the main point being that you'd better really get to know the person you're condemning before you tell him he's the pinnacle of depravity.

Of course, this cuts both ways. I think I could give a good "Woe to you, Pharisees"-style speech, but you don't talk that way to a grey-haired men of God whom you've come to respect. I made my views known to him in a more humble tone, and as it turns out, the preacher does know a few homosexuals, and their lifestyles do little to cast doubt on his beliefs. I didn't have much to say in reply, except that the homosexuals I've encountered have generally been gentle, moral, and respectful of family values.

As the conversation progressed he mentioned another group of which he holds a rather dim view: philosophers. He readily admits to knowing very little about philosophy itself, but he's not been impressed with the philosophers he's met. Each seemed to him to be trying hard to cover over their (presumed) conviction of the existence of God and the truth of the Bible with empty arguments and academic pride.

These and numerous other human interactions have confirmed his conviction that God's moral law and the truth of Scripture is evident to everyone (Romans 1 kind of stuff), and that anyone who lives sinfully or rejects Christianity does so out of wicked motives. I was surprised to hear this. I told him I know a good number of non-Christians whom I believe to be living the best they can and honestly seeking truth. People who reject Christianity or Christian morals, from my perspective, tend to do so for good reasons, not out of a desire to ignore the laws of God. He listened respectfully as I explained my experiences, seeming neither troubled nor dismissive. When I was done he simply said his experiences had been the exact opposite. And he told me a story about his sister, who once took a philosophy class. Her professor spent the whole term explaining why belief in God was unreasonable. Apparently unconvinced, she wrote her term paper or the topic "Why I believe in God". The professor gave her an A, and wrote that if he'd had the experiences she'd had, he would probably believe in God too.

It bothers me that our beliefs are so strongly influenced by our experiences. I feel like there ought to be a universally evident truth - the law of God written on our hearts, or in some unassailable, God-authored book to tell us what to do - but based on my experiences, I can't see how this could be the case.

The irony is that if I really believe the filter of subjective, personal experiences so strongly prescribes our beliefs, I cannot be upset with those who believe the opposite: that God's truth is known to everyone, but heeded by few. I can try to facilitate an experience (probably a conversation) that might cause those who disagree to re-evaluate their beliefs, but I cannot look down on them for their narrow-mindedness. Narrow-mindedness is likely a product of narrow experiences (just as my open-mindedness is a product of my relatively broad experiences) and I can't fault someone for having met only wicked homosexuals, dishonest philosophers, or Christians who have a personal relationship with God. Of course, it's quite possible that someone has had experiences that ought to have prompted them to re-evaluate their beliefs, but generally I'm not qualified to say if this is the case. Just as true tolerance must tolerate intolerance, I cannot judge those who have had different experiences than my own, even if those experiences are narrow and monolithic.

I fear I may sound a bit snooty saying all of this, which is certainly not my intention. I recognize that I may be dead wrong in my broad-minded beliefs - perhaps later experiences will shed a new light on my current ones, perhaps I am subconsciously being horrifically dishonest about my experiences and motives, or perhaps I am predestined to wrong belief by a wrathful God. I do not imagine that my own experiences are any more an indicator of God's truth that anyone else's. I simply do what I believe we all do: I believe what I cannot help but believe, given my experiences.

[+/-] The Conclusion of the Matter

I haven't posted in a while because I don't really know what to say. I've tried to get into my thinking zone and work this through to its logical conclusion, but my mind seems unwilling to do so. I can understand why: the conclusions that seem most fitting to me also feel repulsive and not at all in sync with my intuitions, feelings or disposition.

These are my thoughts: Although there are many compelling arguments that can account for a variety of different forms of suffering, in my opinion there are examples of suffering (the most clear-cut, I think, is natural animal suffering) for which no satisfactory explanation can be given. Whether God's allowance of any given type of suffering (everyday discomfort, human cruelty and selfishness, natural disasters, horrific diseases, animal suffering, etc.) seems justified to you is probably the result of various personal factors. Some people find certain examples of suffering more troubling than others, and I don't think we can come to a consensus about what does or doesn't instinctively feel wrong. But I believe most of us can agree, if we examine the issue carefully enough, that some suffering seems gratuitous, and thus if we cannot agree about precisely how troubling the existence of pain is, at the least I hope we can appreciate that for some people, it is a very great problem indeed.

For myself the problem is significant. At this point in my life I cannot allay my feeling that there is something horribly wrong with this world. I believe - or have believed - in an unfathomably (if not infinitely) good, powerful, and wise God, and also in gratuitous suffering. I see very clearly that these beliefs are inconsistent. Four possible solutions occur to me.

1. I could deny God's goodness. From a purely logical standpoint, this seems to be the simplest and most obvious solution. The world is full of suffering, thus God (if there is a God) must wish it to be so. I could say with Paul that God has the right to create conscious beings whose sole purpose is to be objects of his wrath. (Of course, Paul wouldn't say that God is evil, but rather that what seems to me to be the greatest of evils would be just and good if perpetrated by God.) But I think if I could make myself really believe this about God, I would just as soon kill myself and be apart from him for eternity. Above all else, I cannot and will not believe that God is not good.

2. I could deny God's power. Perhaps the God who fashioned the universe out of nothing is somehow incapable of making it better than it is, or of fixing it when it goes wrong. Perhaps genocides and tsunamis and plagues occur because some cosmic law, some "deep magic from the dawn of time", renders God powerless to prevent them. Perhaps this world is simply the best he could do. But for a boy who was raised on the hope of heaven, on the assurance of a final victory over evil and death and an eternity of fellowship with God, such sever limiting of God's power casts a shadow on all hope. I am not opposed to God having some limits on his power, for example those that require a personal sacrifice to achieve reconciliation or hardships to develop character. However, a God who is incapable of preventing vast and unnecessary anguish is not a God I could find much comfort in trusting. I will not believe in a weak God.

3. I could deny God's knowledge. It occurs to me that the savagery of nature, the fallenness of man, and even the creation of the devil (if you believe in such a being) can be neatly explained by supposing that God does not know the future. If God could not perfectly predict the results of his actions, if he's just doing the best he can, it makes perfect sense that things would go wrong. The problem with this belief (similarly to the one above) is that the fate of every creature in the universe is in the hands of a being who wields unthinkable power, but doesn't really know what he's doing. And considering his track record to this point, I would not be at all confident that he could pull us through. If you can really understand and believe that God has no knowledge of the future and continue with your life, you're much braver than I am. For the sake of my sanity, I can't believe in an ignorant God.

4. The final option I see is to deny the existence of gratuitous (purposeless) suffering. This is the most popular option, I think, for theists. Certainly it is the most appealing. That all pain has a purpose is a wonderful thing to believe, if you can. Moreover, I think it's a respectable position. We as humans can't be expected to understand everything that goes on in the mind of God. As impossible as it seems that a world so fraught with pain and evil could be created and sustained by a wholly loving, wise and powerful God, it would nonetheless be arrogant and foolish for us to say that this cannot be the case. A theist, generally, is someone who is able to trust - for whatever reason, and however foolish it may look on paper - that God has good cause to allow even the most monstrous earthly suffering. I do not begrudge them this ability, but neither do I posses it. My mind balks at the idea that even the suffering which seems most gratuitous is in fact not so; that all things - all - work together for good. While I readily admit the possibility that this is the case, I cannot bring myself to believe in it.

So where does that leave me? I suppose there is a fifth option, and that is atheism. I suspect most atheists are made in this way. The problem of pain seems so deep and so dark that it makes most sense to them to get rid of the whole thing. Given my beliefs (or disbeliefs) as listed above, I think this is a very reasonable option. Why should I not take it? I've had no special experiences with God. He does not interact with me or with the world around me in any way I can perceive. I know of few - if any - compelling arguments for God's existence. Futhermore, I believe I could function as a reasonably confident, ethical, content human being without a belief in any higher being. What stops me from taking this natural step to disbelief in God? The same thing that overruled the previous four solutions: necessity.

In a perfect world (or in my idea of a perfect world) we would form beliefs based on what seemed to be the best available evidence. In our world, I think we often believe what we must. I don't mean "must" in the sense of "I must believe in God because otherwise I'd be hopeless and afraid" (though that's also quite common) but in the sense of "I must believe this because regardless of all evidence to the contrary, I can't seem to make myself disbelieve it." I suppose I could impose on my mind any one of the five solutions above. "See here, mind," I would say, "logic has been employed, conclusions have been drawn, and in the interests of honesty and consistency you must now believe the following", to which my mind would sullenly consent. But to do so would feel unnatural - even dishonest - for me, like forcing on myself left-handedness, or interest in baseball, or the belief that I have a personal relationship with Jesus.

Some may see the hand of God in this, protecting me from the great sin of unbelief. I suspect a far less spectacular explanation, namely that upbringing and convention have so entrenched the idea of a god (possessing very specific characteristics) in my mind that it cannot presently be plucked out even by an equally strong belief in the existence of gratuitous suffering. But whatever the reason, I feel that I have no alternative but to accept that I hold these contradictory beliefs. I doubt that it will always be so (my beliefs are ever in flux) but at present I cannot escape this inconsistency. Not that I see no possible solutions - any of the five I discussed above should suffice - but I see none that I find myself capable of genuinely believing.

This is rather embarrassing for me as a philosopher. I do not suffer from the illusion that the world is a simple place, or the expectation that I can make sense of anything if I put my mind to it, but I have always hoped that I could at least avoid glaring contradictions in my most foundational beliefs. In this I seem to have failed, for now.