Against Nothingness

Wendell Berry.  Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition . Counterpoint, 2001. 176 pgs.  Wendell Berry is a poet, novelist, essayist, and farmer. He has consistently worked and written in favor of traditions over the new and rejected the notion that the modern, progressive, way is always better. In this essay Berry takes particular issue with " Consilience" by E.O. Wilson. Berry does so because he sees Wilson as a representative of modern superstition in the form of faith in human progress and knowledge and the belief that our best hope lies in placing all things under the hegemony of the natural sciences.  One by one, Berry cogently and powerfully argues against materialism, imperialism, and reductionism. "To reduce the mystery and miracle of life to something that can be figured out is inevitably to enslave it, make property of it and put it up for sale." Berry argues that we must evaluate our choices, behavior, and technology with a foc...

Question: How would the world look if more people focused on truth rather than rejoicing at what's wrong? I like this question in theory, but actually typing out an answer feels a little bit like writing a Sunday School lesson. So, let me tell you what I think about with this question. First of all, it reminds of 1 Cor. 13; all of it.  I know, it's just one line "... It does not rejoice in wrongdoing..." but when I read that question I get this overlay of  1 Corinthians love  with  "All you need is Love" .   The next place my mind goes is to focus on that last phrase in it's own right.  "Rejoicing at what's wrong." Roll that around in your mind for a moment.  What images and thoughts come to you?  Mine run the spectrum; jumping from guys whose first impulse upon seeing a frog is stomp on it, to WWII (not that I am in any way comparing boys urges to destruction with Nazi's).  More commonly, we see it everyday on TV and Movies; peop...

Question:  How do you know you have learned something?   You definitely have not learned something just because you did well on an academic style exam which 'tested' your knowledge of the subject.  Beyond that, this question is ridiculously hard to answer.  A subject of philosophers and educational academics throughout the ages... Broadly, just to offer some thoughts on the subject, I think you need to ask what it is you are trying to learn.  Is it an applied life-skill?  A fine-motor skill? A piece of information? An equation or a formula? What?  Because in each of these different cases, having learned that something will look different.   If it is a piece of information, you have learned, or at least learned of it, the first time you come across it.  If your asking how you know when you will remember it, that's highly individual.  I know I will remember something if I repeat it enough, or if it had a major impact on my life, or if ...

Question:  How do you know you have reached the 'when I grow up' stage? Introduction Now there is a question which sends a rush of thoughts to my head.  Lost innocence as a substitute for wisdom, growing up to fast and extended adolescence, maturity and faked maturity, getting married at 13 and getting married at 21, and Someday Never Comes by CCR .  If you have never heard that song, give it a listen.  Here is the first verse and chorus: First thing I remember was askin' papa "why?" For there were many things I didn't know.  And Daddy always smiled; took me by the hand,  Sayin', "Someday you'll understand."  Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son You better learn it fast and you better learn it young, 'Cause, "Someday" never comes.  Thoughts Approaching the Question When I hear this question I can't help thinking about how messed up our society has become about 'growing...

Question: If your life could be whatever you wanted it to be, what would you change? I don't really like this question.  As a Christian, I know that I am to be content with what the Lord has given me. Even that though, I am very grateful for all that the Lord has given me.  Kristina is amazing.  In fact, I would say that she is the best wife ever! We have two healthy children, cute and growing and so much fun.  I have a job that I feel called to and blessed in, I enjoy it and am surrounded by good people.  And I trust that God is giving me what I need.  So... what would I change? Well, there are all the obvious ones: having the complete bible memorized in multiple translations, including the original languages (which I would, of course, fully understand).  Having more money, both for my family and to give away.  Not having any debt, which goes along with that first one. Maybe I would have written and published a book or two by now.  ...

Question: What if you knew you were going to live tomorrow? This question is a corollary of the 2 " what if you knew you were going to die? " posts I did last week.  What I think about when I ask this question is this: what if I knew I was a statistically average person (for me that means I will live to be 77.8 or so) with a full life expectancy ahead of me?  What would I do with that time?  The trouble for me is that I am living my answer.  I guess that is not really trouble, its a blessing, but makes for a fairly boring post.  Given an average lifespan, I would seek to grow daily in my faith, falling deeper in love with God and getting to know Jesus more and more with each passing moment.  I would want to use and develop the gifts God has given me, for His glory and the furtherance of His kingdom. I would want to grow in the love of Christ, and I would do this through my family, friends, and serving in ministry. I would seek wisdom, beginning in the f...

Question: What if you knew you were going to die in a month? This question was added in response to Q2 .  I think its interesting to think about this in contrast with dying tomorrow.  After all, if you are going to die tomorrow you don't really have much time.  But if you are going to die in a month, you have 30 days to consider.  Suddenly skipping sleep is no longer an option!  I also think this would be much harder to live through.  Having a day would be stressful enough, but I wouldn't have too much time to dwell on things.  Having a month...? In a month, then, I would want to do a few things.   First of all, the standard package: Visit family and friends around the country, spend quality time with family, go on some romantic dates with Kristina, read a good book or two, and enjoy the everyday.  Secondly, what I would consider something akin to a faith package: share the gospel, pray, preach a powerful sermon or two, encourage the tee...

Question 2:  What if you knew you were going to die tomorrow? (also: What would you do if the world was going to end tomorrow?  What if tomorrow was your last day on earth?) So many versions of that famous evangelism question: If you died tomorrow, where would you go?  It is different, however, to ask the question in this form.  I think the point is to reflect on what I am doing today in light of the possibility of tomorrow being the end.   One of my favorite answers to this is this quotation, falsely attributed to Martin Luther: "If I knew that tomorrow was the end of the world, I would plant an apple tree today." The reason I like this is because it reminds me that the actions we do and the lives we live are defined by more than simply the end results they bring.  I know, we live in a results driven society, and activities without tangible, measurable, immediate results are often devalued, but we can't actually judge our lives that way (at least, ...

Slavoj Zizek and John Millbank, ed. Creston Davis. The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? Mit Press: 2009. 416 pgs.  In The Monstrosity of Christ  Millbank attempts to do what Hart does not, as per my last book review.  He attempts to dialogue with a serious atheist of our age: Slavoj Zizek.  The two of them are billed, by the editor, as having an intellectual encounter the equivalent of "ultimate fighting" as they seek to grapple with the very definition of Christianity.  Zizek is a renowned philosopher, militant marxist, dialectic materialist, and atheist.  Millbank is a neo-orthodox and leading anglo-catholic theologian.   In part 1, Zizek presents his reading of Christianity, which seemed to be incredibly weak.  He apparently has used very limited sources to draw some unique, but in my opinion erroneous, conclusions about Christianity, Jesus, and Paul.   In Part 2, Millbank takes on this interpretation and counters with...

Oliver O'Donovan, Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community , William B. Eerdmans: 2002, 72 pgs. In The City of God, St Augustine revised Cicero's famous definition of a community to read: "a multitude of rational beings united by agreeing to share the things they love." This definition of a community or a people provides the structure of Oliver O'Donovan's 2001 Stob Lectures, which are the content of this book. Chapter one considers "objects of love," chapter two "agreement to share," and chapter three "a multitude of rational beings united." Delivered within months of 9/11, these lectures consider some of the multifaceted intersections between politics and religion, a topic to which O'Donovan has given considerable attention to over the years. In the face of rising patriotism and modern publicity based community, O'Donovan draws the readers attention back to the logic of a universal human comm...

Selected and with introduction by: Francis S. Collins. Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith . HarperOne, 2010. 323 pgs Francis Collins is a noted, probably famous, American geneticist who lead the Human Genome Project. He is also the author of The Language of God: A Scientist Provides Evidence for Belief , a popular and important work on science and faith. Now, in this book, Collins has gathered together a selection of readings on the reason for faith which range in period from ancient Greece until quite recently, and which includes authors such as C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and N.T. Wright (three of my favorites), as well as Plato, Madeleine L'Engle, Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Ghandi. An interesting collection to say the least. Obviously, I cannot review this book like I would a normal one. No less than 32 authors are represented in this work, and the quality of both their writings and arguments, while largely within what I would characterize as 'excellent', ...

Leslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt , and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1995. 105 pgs. In this gem of a book Newbigin takes the reader on a journey away from the idea of Cartesian certainty and towards a more proper scaffolding for thought and belief. He denies the possibility of ideal certainty with no doubt and concludes that seeking this ideal can only to skepticism (of an extreme sort) and Nihilism. The thesis of this book might best best be stated as follows: the proper confidence of a Christian is not the possession of indubitable knowledge but the confidence of one who has heard and answered God's call of 'Follow me.' In order to demonstrate this point, Newbigin first examines three 'paths' whose titles, which are his first three chapter titles, seem somewhat counter-intuitive. In the first chapter, 'Faith as the Way to Knowledge,' Newbigin argues that if knowledge, and God, are ultim...

Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000. 310pgs This isn't the first time I have mentioned this book, but I just finished it today. As I have mentioned before, it is a topic of some interest to me. Depending on your particular bent or training, the question may seem easy to answer in the positive or negative. From a philosophical point of view, God is impassible, and so of course he doesn't suffer. From a gospel story point of view, the natural reply is "What about Jesus, the Son of God, one member of the Holy Trinity, suffering and dying on the cross?" Indeed, and such is the dilemma. Of course, it is only compounded by our 20th century focus on Empathy (I just recently found out that this word first entered the English language in 1919! Different book though) and our desire to have a God who shares our suffering, with the nearly assumed correlative position that if God does not suffer with us, then he can...