mrmaple on Revelife

Weblog

Saturday, 18 July 2009

Reasons: Part III

Finally, at the end of a long year working in the hospital as a student, I came down with my own illness: a collapsed lung that required an operation and some hospital time of my own. It was not my first surgery for the problem and I still harbor the fear that it will not be the last. Even as I sit here typing, I still feel the healing scars that the procedure left in my side.

True to form, my mother insisted that there was a Reason behind it; the timing, the method, the stresses I was going through were all too coincidental to be due to anything else. And we talked, perhaps for the first time, about what it meant to use reason and to look for Reasons. It reminded me of the Tower of Siloam:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." - Luke 13

Whenever I talk at length about the nature of suffering, I mention an example a mentor once used. Suffering is simply the push that tips a cup over; it has no bearing on what comes out. This is what I have come to believe about suffering, illness, death, and all Events with consequences for which we seek a Reason: they reveal what is inside me, the things deep down inside that refuse to come out otherwise. And who was I? Someone lacking faith.

The passage made me think about one of my favorite narratives in John about a man born blind (whom I was surprised to see was told to wash in the pool of Siloam):

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. "Go," he told him, "wash in the Pool of Siloam" (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, "Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?" Some claimed that he was.
Others said, "No, he only looks like him."
But he himself insisted, "I am the man."

"How then were your eyes opened?" they demanded.

He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."- John 9
I keep returning to this passage in John because of the simplicity, power, and revealing nature of the healing. There was no intricate, mind-numbing litany of theological arguments or philosophical musings about the nature of suffering. There was no explanation or rationalization for the years of darkness and a lifetime in blindness. Jesus merely gave the command to heal and to be healers: the solution of Himself alone. In fact, it was the Pharisees, the educated elite of their day, who did their best to conjure an explanation and a Reason for the healing. In the end, it was not that they ever lacked a reason but that they found it insufficient and incredulous. They interrogated and hurled insults at a poor and simple man, a man whose only testimony and defense was, "One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!... Lord, I believe."

I believe that my mother and I fall on two ends of a spectrum of belief, but that true faith lies somewhere in between. In some sense, we both have outpaced our capacities for faith, wanting more Reason than we have right to demand or see fulfilled. We are both searching for a mechanism of control that often remains firmly beyond our grasp and comprehension, but that is no reason for cynicism or despair. Indeed, in the words of 19th century minister AB Simpson:

And so I thought the healing would be an it too, that the Lord would take me like the old run-down clock, wind me up, and set me going like a machine. It is not thus at all. I found it was Himself coming in instead and giving me what I needed at the moment. I wanted to have a great stock, so that I could feel rich; a great store laid up for many years, so that I would not be dependent upon Him the next day; but He never gave me such a store. I never had more holiness or healing at one time than I needed for that hour. He said: "My child, you must come to Me for the next breath because I love you so dearly I want you to come all the time. If I gave you a great supply, you would do without Me and would not come to Me so often; now you have to come to Me every second, and lie on My breast every moment."...

I had to learn to take from Him my spiritual life every second, to breathe Himself in as I breathed, and breathe myself out. So, moment by moment for the spirit, and moment by moment for the body, we must receive. You say, "Is not that a terrible bondage, to be always on the strain ?" What, on the strain with one you love, your dearest Friend ? Oh, no! It comes so naturally, so spontaneously, so like a fountain, without consciousness, without effort, for true life is always easy, and overflowing.
In every encounter with the limitations of my capabilities, with each circumstance and happenstance, there is indeed something in me that can be humbled and taught to reach for Christ. Perhaps it is a sin I need to repent of, a fault in my character that needs mending, or the beginnings of a testimony that will one day encourage a suffering brother or sister. They may not be the reasons for which I suffered, but I would be foolish to ignore the chance to redeem it for something greater. For in all things, I must have faith in the Christ who gives sight to the blind and pneuma, spirit, to the dead.

Who has given to You
That it should be paid back to him?
Who has given to You
As if You needed anything?
From You, and to You, and through You
Come all things, O Lord
And all we do is give back to You
What always has been Yours

Lord, we're breathing the breath
That You gave us to breathe
To worship You, to worship You
And we're singing these songs
With the very same breath
To worship You, to worship You
-Matt Redman, Breathing the Breath

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Paradoxes
Since Revelife seems to thrive on claims to superior logic and thinking skills, here's a mind-twister for you: the Nelson-Grelling Paradox (paraphrased here from Wiki).

There are words that naturally describe themselves, such as "short", "unhyphenated", "English", and "pentasyllabic". We call such words "autological."

There are words that do not describe themselves, such as "long" (for not being that long), "abbreviated", "French", "misspelled", and "monosyllabic". We call such words "heterological."

By these definitions, you'd say that every word belongs to one category or the other. A word either describes itself or it doesn't; a *blank* word is either a *blank* word or it isn't.

But what about the word "heterological" itself?

1) Let's say that "heterological" describes itself. But, by definition, that would mean that "heterological" would not be able to describe itself. Therefore, the word would have to be autological and heterological at the same time. Doesn't work.
2) Let's say that "heterological" doesn't describe itself. Then it would do what it says it does... but that would make the word autological. Same problem.

Yikes.

Many commenters and posters on Revelife assume that, since part (or all) of their argument is logical, it is Necessarily and Absolutely True. These arguments are often based on axioms, or fundamental assumptions that cannot be proved. The more popular axioms here are:
- God exists
- God doesn't exist
- The Bible is true/inerrant/infallible
- Science is true/inerrant/infallible
- Human life has inherent dignity and value
- Human life only has the value and dignity we attribute to it
- I'm smart
- You're stupid
The failure in logic, argument, and civil discourse happens when we fail to recognize that the validity of logic is based entirely on its foundational axioms. We tend to assume that, simply because an argument is logical, it is true.

But what do we do when our axioms, unprovable as they may be, are at odds with each other? What happens when the mechanism of logic itself fails (as in the Nelson-Grelling Paradox)?

I propose that we simply say that logic supports an argument and that we eliminate the need to say that logic proves an argument. This is how we cope with "real life"; we assemble information, thoughts, and lines of reasoning that support or dissuade us from making certain assumptions and conclusions about life.

In this sense, the best function of a paradox is to keep us humble, keep us thinking, and keep us in constant dialogue and encouragement of one another.

Monday, 01 June 2009

Is faith sexy?

[A quick break from the 3-part series on Reasons]

Thanks to moritheil for highlighting this comic:

The rest of the comic series goes on to parody a Christian/non-Christian date, but the question it raises is interesting. Exactly how scarce are "twentysomething guys interested in faith"?

The Association of Religion Data Archives, which is related to the venerable Barna group, has an interesting survey feature that lets you compare your religious stance to others in your age/gender/belief group. Here's what I got on the basic survey:

So, only 20-30% of Protestant 18-35 year old college-degree wielding males maintain to classic Christian behaviors (e.g. weekly church attendance, regular prayer & Bible reading). Huh. I don't know if such a paucity makes faith sexy per se, but it certainly seems lamentable. I know I hear about it all the time from single Christian women.

Where do you fall? Take the ARDA survey (at the bottom of the page).

Saturday, 23 May 2009

Reasons: Part II

Madness and chaos. That was what disease seemed to me, a medical student struggling for the first time with life and death in the hospital wards. Kind and generous patients suffered from horrific fates while the malingering and malicious fed off of the system's generosity without punishment. The hospital was a new and disorienting place in which the old rules, the old Reasons no longer seemed to apply. Who lived and who died was less a function of morality as it was of biological processes, lab tests, missing information, and elements of luck. In a world where so much was at stake, only the new reasons, the Evidence of hard data and tight correlations mattered. Even basic assumptions about standards of care were challenged and occasionally overthrown by the latest and greatest studies, and many reasonable, long-standing associations between health and disease disintegrated under closer scrutiny.

My own shift in perspective was subtle at first. I wasn't able to articulate my discomfort in the new environment until one of my friends began using "evidence based arguments" for everything. He would launch into political discussions with others and pepper them with the question, "Where's your reference? Show me the study." It was an irritating thing to do in the context of otherwise casual conversation, but the inflammatory nature came from the realization that most of what we say on a daily basis is complete bullshit and superstition. We speculate and make conclusions based on very little evidence because that is how we must deal with the complexities of daily life; we ignore and deny how uneducated and sporadic our decisions are because we would otherwise lose the confidence to act and survive from one moment to the next.

Something in me hardened. My faith in God, the Ultimate Reason, which had once been so strong, began to settle for lesser things. God may count the hairs on your head, but that number will be exactly zero once your chemotherapy is started. You can pray for a miracle, but if we don't amputate that leg tomorrow you might lose your life. Praying is good, but praying 20 hours outside in the snow is not; please restart your bipolar medications or we won't let you out of here.

And so prayer, something I once loved to do, became more an act of desperation and superstition than one of faith. To some degree it was because I didn't know what to pray for, but really it was because I was tired of being disappointed.

Curiously enough, I began knocking on wood and crossing my fingers. I started avoiding words like "quiet" and "slow". At first I thought it strange that sensations of powerlessness and futility would inspire superstition and stifle prayer, but then I realized I was tired of bullshitting and really just wanted to admit that I didn't know I didn't know I didn't know.

Tuesday, 19 May 2009

Reasons: Part I

My mom looks for Reasons the way some people look for spare change on the ground. She always has an eye out for them, an ear cocked to hear the faintest whisper of a consequence or a lesson. Most are simple illustrations of basic character: an irritating person placed in my life is meant to teach me patience; a flat tire following an unrelated, stingy financial decision is a reminder to be more generous; an unexpected piece of good news is an example of God's consistent goodness. Some links are easy to see and understand. Others are not.

I grew up listening to these narratives, and the concept of Reasons has always influenced my thinking. But as I grew older, reason began to challenge the Reasons. I began to wonder if such rationalizations were merely the innate coping mechanisms by which all people learn to make sense of an otherwise haphazard world, how we maintain hope in the face of difficult situations.

It started with the big questions. Were people really poor because they were lazy? Was HIV really God's punishment to homosexuals? Was evolution really at odds with Christianity? And of course, the biggest of them all: is there a Reason for suffering?

For nearly each of these questions, I found the answer to be, "Perhaps, but not always. Perhaps, but not necessarily." My mom and I would go through endless cycles of arguments, many of them heated and bitter. Sometimes I held on to prove a point, but sometimes I fought out of sheer stubbornness and pride. I was challenging the Reasons because I began to doubt that there were any.