Alister McGrath, Surprised by Meaning

Alister McGrath is a compelling writer on science and theology. While pursuing a Ph.D. in chemistry, he initially set out to bolster his atheism, but in the process, became a Christian instead. He then received a doctorate in theology and is now a major voice in that field and in the theology-science dialogue. His Surprised By Meaning, though a slim, unpretensious book, surprised me with its insights. Below are a few from chapters 4, 5, and 10. 

Science, McGrath asserts, seeks to make sense of nature in three significant ways:

1. Casual explanation: If A causes B, then A explains B.
2. The Best Explanation: How can these phenomena best be explained?
3. Explanatory Unification: Powerful theories bring together ideas once thought to be unrelated.

Nevertheless, ultimately, human beings seek a deeper order, a deeper level of intelligibility. McGrath writes that science cannot satisfy this deeper search; it is a search that only belief in God satisfies.

When McGrath pursued a Ph.D. in chemistry, he wanted to support his atheism with the insights of natural science (something like the contemporary "New Atheists" do). Instead he discovered that his atheism was not well established intellectually. In that process, McGrath came to make a distinction between "scientism" as a totalizing worldview (my words) and legitimate scientific theory. That seems accurate by my lights. For example, what Richard Dawkins proposes as the conclusions of scientific study are actually metaphysical conclusions dressed up with scientific decoration. 

McGrath also concludes that, contrary to Jacque Monod and Richard Dawkins, some notion of teleology emerges from study of evolutionary processes itself. I agree with McGrath’s point—that nature, even with its random events, ultimately points toward a goal, a telos. The claws of a crab point toward the goal of grabbing prey. Nonetheless, in my experience with scientists, the word “teleology” brings significant resistance, probably because of the way previous philosophies employed the term. Still that resistance has intrigued me because science, and even evolution, does move in certain directions. "Such teleology," McGrath writes, "is empirical, grounded in a posteriori discernment, not a priori imposition."

These are all good points, which merit discussion. So I'll just leave you with some questions from these chapters...

• Stepping back to the bigger issues of science and theology, how do the two fields come together in McGrath’s view?
• What is the relation between the ways science and religion “make sense of things”?
• How do you evaluate McGrath’s assertion that the case for atheism rests on “rather shaky foundations”?
• Is the “warfare” thesis, as a way of understanding the relation of science and religion, increasingly discredited?
• How do you evaluate McGrath’s statement, “Within a Reformed theological framework, for example, ‘random’ can be translated as ‘non-predictable,’ and thus contextualized within a generalized doctrine of divine providence”?
• Does teleology naturally arise from the study of biological systems?

How Harold Camping Got Me on CNN

As I type this entry, the Rapture hasn't yet occurred, as Harold Camping predicted. But I'm not entirely unhappy with Camping. He was responsible for my shot on TV. This is a brief excerpt from my book, Creation and Last Things, in which I comment on how many times I've heard that Jesus was going to return in my life. (At that point, Camping was third on the list.)

In summer 1994, I received a call from New College, Berkeley. CNN had contacted this school of theology to request a commentator on a current end times scenario. And so, in just two hours, unprepared and therefore dressed in shorts and a cotton sweater, I found myself on camera, interviewed by a rather congenial Craig Heaps about the engineer and radio commentator, Harold Camping. From Camping’s Oakland “Family Radio” ministry headquarters, he predicted the strong possibility of the Second Coming of Christ in 1994. (I was at least heartened by Camping’s realization that our Gregorian calendar had a serious flaw. He believed that Jesus was born in 6 BC.) Heaps asked me, “What do you think is the danger of this type of speculation?” My answer: that it would distract us from the task of preaching of Gospel and bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth. And that remains my concern.

So thanks for the break, Harold Camping, but let's hope that today's (apparently) mistaken prediction doesn't distract us from what God really wants us to do.

St. Clive, Science, and Theology

I’ve been wondering how to bring together three of my favorite subjects: C.S. Lewis, science, and theology. (Or, counted another way, it becomes two topics: Lewis with science and theology.) Recently, I came across Lewis’s essay—really an oral presentation to the Oxford Socratic Club—from 1944 in which St. Clive takes up the question: “Is theology poetry?” And he refines the question to become to whether theology is merely poetry (which it isn’t), and then analyzes the poetry of the “Scientific Outlook” presented by evolution (and especially H. G. Wells) as a philosophy of progress that gradually and painfully overcomes obstacles. 

It’s a fascinating lecture—as Lewis is wont to create—not on science per se, or even evolutionary science, but on the use of evolution to create a worldview, one which challenges orthodox Christian accounts of the world.

And I want to lean on this point just for a moment. It is here—not as a field of study, but as an understanding of the world or sense-of-life, where science often intersects--or even collides with--theology. Many evolutionists see a mindless, “pitiless indifference” (to quote Richard Dawkins) against the entirely purposeful creation by the hand of God.

The reason Lewis rejected the “Scientific Outlook” was this: it asserts the truth and reasonableness of its claim without thereby providing a place for reason. Or as he put it:

If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

The Scientific Outlook tries to fit in reason in an irrational—or maybe arational—world. Belief in a Creator God who endows humanity with reason makes entirely more sense. Lewis concludes that’s why he does not believe in the “Scientific Outlook,” but instead believes in Christianity, which includes reason and science.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

I suppose that’s where St. Clive, science, and theology all come together for me and why I subscribe to both the affirmation of Christian theology and the insights of science, including those of evolution through natural selection.

How about you? What do you think?

Something Still Worth Living For

As I come to preaching at the final 545 worship service at Bidwell Pres and ponder what I'll tell the college students before they head off to summer or to life beyond the classroom, I remember the amazing quote (one of my favorites) from "St. Clive," aka C. S. Lewis

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at sea. We are far to easily pleased.

The reward C. S. Lewis envisions is the "weight of glory," and for me, this pairs beautifully with Paul's description of what he lives for in his letter to the Philippians, chapter three:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Following God's upward call to glory--that makes life worth living. What does that look like for you?

Science, Time, and Eternity: A Meditation on the Way to Easter

(This entry is excerpted and adapted from my book, Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Science and Theology. Look right or click here.)

Time—one of the most fascinating topics for human reflection—arises from God’s creation. It was the brilliant fourth century North African rhetorician and philosopher, Augustine, who presented the question,

What, then, is time? There can be no quick and easy answer to that question, for it is no simple matter even to understand what it is, let alone find words to explain it. Yet, in our conversation, no word is more familiarly used or more easily recognized than “time.” We certainly understand what is meant by the word both when we use it ourselves and when we hear it used by others. 

What then is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.            

And so time is a puzzle, but also a gift. Without creation—and scientists would remind us that without matter—there is no time. God continues to relate to creation as the eternal God, as the One who is not limited by time, but encompasses time. To grasp this relationship with the temporal world, we have to look at God’s entering human history in Jesus Christ. There time is “baptized” so-to-speak—God touches time and surrounds it with eternity. Thomas Oden, a theologian who has done much to demonstrate the importance of classical insights from ancient thinkers, summarizes the connection between Jesus Christ and time this way:

The decisive Christian analogy concerning time is that between the eternal indwelling in time and the incarnation. Brilliantly, the classical exegetes taught that the creation of time is analogous to the incarnation in this way: The Father inhabits time, just as the Son inhabits human flesh.         

In this light, God’s eternity surrounds our time-bound world. God is before all, in the present moment, and the One at the end of time. The Bible clearly presents God’s ability to act “before” all now exists. 1 Timothy 1:9—where on would never expect to find a metaphysical thought about time—describes God’s grace as “given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began…” (my italics). In a similar vein, God comes “after” our current temporal sequence. God is described in Revelation 6:12 as the One “who was and is and is to come” (my emphasis). 

God’s eternity therefore is not timelessness, but the fullness of time. You can imagine a piece of paper with a long, thin line written on it. In this analogy, time is the line, God is the surface on which it is written. One has to advance along the line to get from point A to point B. Yet using the paper, you can move between A and B without moving along the line. Or try another analogy: an author writing a play. The author can write in Act Two, then step back to Act One, then jump to Act Five, without any difficulty. She can even be writing more than one play at a time. God, whose eternity encompasses time, is not bound by a chronological sequence.

            

This understanding of time is reflected in the language of biblical Greek. Its two words for “time” create a distinction that instructs powerfully. Chronos is clock-time, the rhythmic advance of minutes, hours, and days, which surprisingly, I am told, has only dominated Western thought since public clocks became prominent in the late Middle Ages. “Does your watch keep good time?” That is the question of chronos. The other word for time, kairos can be translated as “opportunity,” or more literally “a decisive point in time,” and in it is contained the sense of divine appointment, a “God incident.” An event is kairos not because a watch says that it is five minutes before six on a Friday morning, but because all is in place and God is ready to speak. So God is not confined by the chains of time (chronos), but can fill any moment with divine Presence (kairos). We long for this fullness of time. We crave a ripple of Eternity in the waters of time.

            

The Oxford scholar and twentieth-century Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, offers an electrifying analogy for this longing as a sign of our eternal life. Our constant surprise at the flow of time (which scientists call “the arrow of time”) means God created us not for temporality but for eternity. Lewis comments on the insight from 2 Peter 3:8 that for God, not only is a thousand years like one day (Psalm 90:4), but also “one day is like a thousand years.” He reminds us that the Eternal can meet us at any moment, “but we have touched what is not in any way commensurable with lengths of time, whether long or short.” Our hope then is to be removed from the sequence of time.

For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.

This “fish” is meant to swim in the waters of eternity. Doesn't that lead us right to the heart of Easter, the promise of resurrection to new life through Christ?

C. S. Lewis and the Humanity of Spirituality

One of the persistent temptations for those who write about Christianity spirituality is to be too triumphant—to act as if, once we profess faith in Christ, life is “all kitties and bubbles,” as one friend put it. Or to quote another, “I once was bad and, sad and now I’m good and glad.” This impulse even led to an early heresy that has amazingly persisted in various forms: Jesus didn’t really walk on this troubled, trodden, earth, but he somehow managed to float above it. (I mean literally, he walked, but his feet never made prints.) Consequently, if we want to follow Jesus, we need to move above this earthly existence whenever possible. That concept, however, strikes me as singular inhuman. 

Of course, there are great, amazing, ecstatic days of faith. But we know this unmitigated sugar-rush spirituality doesn’t last. Thankfully, C. S. Lewis agrees. And that’s what distinguishes his writing from the rest of the pack. In his imagined correspondence between a senior and junior devil on how to tempt a human soul, The Screwtape Letters, Lewis reminds us that life, by nature, has its highs and lows. Merely the fact that we are bodies, that we are physical means that we will experience waves these waves.

Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.

And so a trough becomes not a point for despair, but for reaching to God and for God to develop our wills in the process. The prayers in dryness “are those that please Him best.” Why? Because we are freely choosing God. He closes the eighth Screwtape letter with a stunning allusion to the life of Jesus on the Cross, only too appropriate to mention as Good Friday looms in front of us: the senior tempter, Screwtape, writes to his junior apprentice,

Do not be deceived Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

So Lewis will not have an unreal spirituality, nor will he have it entirely other-worldly. God in Everyday Life. God in the Quotidian. God has given us true, good pleasures on this earth, and when we find those, we thankfully forget ourselves. Screwtape writes to Wormwood,

On your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks to his new [worldly] friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there—a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures.”

And those real pleasures come from God who created them, the One that Screwtape complains is “a hedonist at heart.” Pleasures have to be twisted for them to be of use as temptations—that is, put in the wrong context, or for the wrong motives, or wrong ends. But pleasures with the right context, motives, and ends are pathways to God and they connect us to God. The gifts lead us back to the Giver.

And so when we find pleasure in doing what we are created to do, we lose ourselves and the stinking self-centeredness that stifles joy. There a deep paradox emerges:

When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.

So this is the theme in Lewis I’ve named the Humanity of Spirituality. Human comes from a root that means “earth.” And we are certainly tied to this creation. Our feet are firmly planted in this earth. Even, it’s true, when God’s finger touches our human life we never entirely leave it. I commend then this rule: Let’s be cautious about anyone who writes otherwise—who believes we can lift our feet off the ground, leaving no prints when we follow Jesus—and calls it Christian spirituality.

Fare Well, Rob Bell

Rob Bell, being hip and optimistic

Hearing the controversies about Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, and then actually reading the book, I’ve been struck by how much better Bell would fare in a mainline congregation. (I’ve also been struck by how popular the book is—I think Love Wins hit #4 Amazon #4 last week and hovers at #7 as I type.) Why would Rob Bell fare better as a mainliner? It’s not because we mainline types are “libbed out” and don’t care about the Bible any more, it's certainly not because of the infallibility of the mainline, but because the questions he asks can find honest engagement without rancor here. And really, mainliners here just engage (at their best) with the whole of the Christian church in time (reading not only Calvin and Luther, but also Gregory of Nyssa and Thomas Aquinas) and in breadth (taking in the insights of Roman Catholics and Orthodox, for example). It’s simply a way of engaging what C. S. Lewis penned as “mere Christianity." 

Bell clearly writes from a contemporary American evangelical context. He talks about praying the “sinner’s prayer,” “accepting Christ” and therefore of “getting saved.” Good concepts, but very particular, coded language—as Bell points out, “personal relationship” with God is not found in the Bible. I have so much good to say about evangelicalism—and have been duly nurtured myself—but there’s simply a mean spirit that has emerged in response to Bell from some evangelical commentators (but certainly not all) that I’ve found neither beneficial for me or for Bell. So back to party-line evangelicals… Bell also asserts that the church is too often seen as “antiscience”? Yes… in certain circles. But I’ll speak personally: I’ve been in the mainline (in my case, Presbyterian) church and am working on engaging science with faith, first through my book Creation and Last Things, and more recently through a grant program particularly designed to engage scientific insight in local congregations, Scientists in Congregations. Have I met with disagreement? Yes. Outright dismissal? Never. And those are just my experiences and only two of them at that. It just seems a little better than what Bell’s experiencing. (But admittedly, who knows what would happen if my books hit the top ten? I’m willing to find out….)

Admittedly, Bell is a little too optimistic. As many other commentators have noted, he interprets Scripture in a particular direction. It’s a kinder, gentler Bible. For example on God’s condemnation, he seems especially concerned that Ghandi—Ghandi was so good; should go to hell? He was particularly annoyed by a response on a slip of paper to quote from Ghandi displayed at his church’s art show: “Reality check: He’s in hell.” Bell seems to infer that Ghandi could never be in hell. This makes certain sections of the Christian church go ballistic, but as I read Bell, and watch the promo video for Love Wins (which these days is more important than actually reading the book), his point is a little more subtle: Do we know for sure Ghandi’s in hell? No, we can’t say with absolute certainty. When Ghandi saw the full light of God's presence, how did he respond? As C. S. Lewis wrote so poignantly (which, incidentally, is one suggestion to Bell: include the chapter on hell in The Problem of Pain): the gates of hell are locked on the inside.

More can be written, of course, but I’ll close this post here: To understand the book we should take in the citation that alludes to the title: “God says yes, we can have what we want, because love wins.” Even in ultimate judgment, God gives us the dignity of rejecting the gospel. One of the most notorious responses to Bell has been John Piper’s tweet “Farewell Bell.” How interesting that judgment has been declared on a book that itself rethinks God’s judgment and emphasizes that God only says “Farewell” when we have shut the door on him. I say, keep it up Bell, but listen to the wider community of Christ. There you can fare well.

P.S. If you want a fresh perspective on Love Wins, read Donald Miller's review.

Heaven and Hell

I've been reading--and enjoying--Rob Bell's book, Love Wins. Here's my review of Bell. Before I blog about the latter, I thought I'd lay out my own ideas, which appeared in the final chapter of Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Science and Theology. Find out more here. (One other thing: Since this blog post has proven to be, by far, my most popular, I started a series of prequels here.)

At times, I've remarked that the gruesome portrayal of the damned in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" reveals a common human desire for our enemies’ demise. Maybe that is not the whole story. Perhaps we can find another thread. When I first typed “hell” into my laptop a moment ago, “heal” came out. Significant? Perhaps. I—like many of us—hope that God will heal Hitler, and Stalin, and the obnoxiously loud next-door neighbor, and the rabid atheist professor so that they all would turn to the Light. In a word, I hope for a life with no hell.

            

The Bible is much more interested in the new heavens and earth than in hell. So we ought to start there. It is the direction creation has pointed from the beginning. In fact, with the consummation of creation in mind, Genesis 1-2 receives new light. The Lord calls the world  “good,” not only in its initial form, but because God will remain faithful to creation and lead it continually toward perfection. Put in a different way, we fully understand the goodness of the first act of creation in light of the final act of new creation.

            

In the prophets, Isaiah stands out describing of the promise of the future and insights into creation. As Israel experienced increasing national trauma after its defeat and subsequent occupation by the hated and indomitable Babylonians in the sixth century BC, several prophets looked with hope to a coming day—the day of the promised victory by God’s Messiah. Several passages in the second part of Isaiah (chapters 40-66) link eschatological hope with the creation at the beginning. For example, Isaiah promises a new day of hope for the exiled people in which the natural order will return, subduing chaos as in Genesis 1, and restoring creation in some form to Eden:

For the Lord will comfort Zion;

he will comfort all her waste places,

and will make her wilderness like Eden,

      her desert like the garden of the Lord;

joy and gladness will be found in her,

      thanksgiving and the voice of song. (Isaiah 51:3)

The final chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22, provide a vision of another city, the City of God. In it ceaseless praise of God continues. Beautiful music--I'd like to think it's jazz--fills the heavenly city. And there is continual activity. We are not simply given rest in the new creation, but work without the curse of futility. (“By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread until you return to the ground,” Genesis 3:19). The final words offer two great promises: “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates” (22:14). In this vision of cleansing and glory, we can take hold of the tree that Adam and Eve were forced to avoid after their disobedience (Genesis 3:24).  As a final act of triumph, Jesus will return to right our turbulent world, where God’s people face persecution:

The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

      Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen. (Revelation 22:20-21)

In 1994 the author (and now speaker) Betty Eadie sold boatloads of her book, Embraced by the Light, which describes her near-death experiences. Shortly after the book was published, I studied Eadie’s revelations with a church adult education class. We were struck by the specific and comforting details she described about heaven. In many ways, we simply wanted  to believe them. On the other hand, we know the difficulty of assessing the truth of these descriptions by Eadie or other similar authors. Broadly, they confirm some type of afterlife. Nevertheless, the interest in Eadie’s book reveals that Americans crave to know precisely what happens “on the other side.” Will I see my mother again? Will I understand why my son died of cancer at age nine? Will my dog be in heaven? The Bible offers both a more profound answer, but does not satisfy every speculation. The Bible concerns itself foremost with God’s justice to right a world distorted by sin and secondly with God’s salvation of a people. We are left without exhaustive detail of what happens to each of us individually. God will create a fully just world where the people of God will—for the first time—live fully human lives, thereby glorifying their Creator.

            

And so we arrive at the unpleasant doctrine of hell. I would be glad to forget it all about it. It is not only unpopular (“There you Christians go again with your judging!”), but personally repelling (Remember I want everyone to be healed). But unfortunately we hear it in Scripture and particularly on the lips of Jesus. It also makes sense of free will (what if some continue to resist God?) and God’s sovereignty (can a good God allow the unrepentant to exist forever?). Some biblical scholars—notably the prominent English evangelical, John Stott—have taken a fresh look and determined that hell cannot be everlasting, conscious punishment. His work demonstrates the need to re-look at this terrible doctrine. My hope is that we will be able to put aside any notions we have read in Dante’s poetry or seen on The Omen and listen patiently to the Scripture.

            

First of all, what does hell mean? Beginning with the key words is often a good approach. Sheol and Hades are transliterations of Hebrew and Greek words respectively that simply mean the abode of the dead, not necessarily a place of punishment. In the New Testament, hell translates a Greek term, geenna, which originated as a garbage dump in the valley of Hinnon, in which children ritually were later killed and dedicated to the god, Molech and dumped as refuse. This pit burned day and night. At the time of Christ, it had became a symbol for a place of end times punishment.

            

C. S. Lewis, in his brilliant book The Problem of Pain, exercises his skills as a literary critic, by analyzing the key texts on hell in the Gospels. He demonstrates that there are three primary images: punishment (the “eternal punishment” of Matthew 25:46), destruction (Matthew 10:28’s “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”), and finally privation and banishment (“the outer darkness” where the slave who hid his talents in Matthew 25:30 is sent). Lewis comments, “it is not necessary to concentrate on the images of torture to the exclusion of those suggesting destruction and privation.” He continues by looking again at the conclusion of the parable of the sheep and goats (especially Matthew 25:34, 41). 

[T]he damned go to a place never made for men at all. To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being in earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is “remains.” 

If there is existence in hell, it is a shadowy one. Lewis adds one final reflection on the biblical texts: Jesus emphasizes finality, not duration in these texts. “Consignment to the destroying fire is usually treated as the end of the story—not as the beginning of a new story.”

            

I must add one note to Lewis. There is also a tension in Scripture between final exclusion and an ultimate healing. 1 Timothy 2:4 affirms that God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” A note of universalism also finds its way in the stirring conclusion to 1 Corinthians 15, “for all of us die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” And a cryptic verse in 1 Peter describes Christ preaching to perished souls. Verse 19 says that after his death, he “went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey.”

            

So in the end, will all be saved? Will “hell” finally end up in “heal”? John Calvin notoriously saw two rooms into which we were born and elected by the sovereign God—either heaven or hell. The doors are looked, and the decision irrevocable. But what if look specifically to the God we know in Jesus Christ? What if we begin with Christ as the elect Representative for all humanity? By his work, we begin in the embrace of God’s love and therefore in the party room of election. The room is, however, not locked. It is of course our choice to move out into the outer darkness. Will God’s ultimate plan for salvation triumph even over our bad decisions? Perhaps this question cannot be solved theoretically, but through prayer—that we are to pray for a redemption far beyond what we could imagine. Perhaps we are to pray for an embrace that includes our cynical co-worker, the rapist who terrorized our streets, and even the most hated and cruel, like the Emperor Nero and Adolf Hitler.

Incredible Foresight

What makes a great author? Among attributes like winsome style and insightful content remains the uncanny ability to see cultural trends, the seeds of which are being sown now, but that won’t bloom for decades.

Read this and tell me if this isn’t today’s “postmodern,” pluralistic world?

Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head.

Written seventy years ago in a religious newspaper called The Guardian, C. S. Lewis sought to describe the environment in which a devil-tempter tries to draw a human being, “the Patient” away from God. This is the environment Lewis brilliantly, poignantly described in first entry in a set of newspaper articles later published as The Screwtape Letters.

What do you think? Does that describe the world you live in?

Friendship, Just Friendship

I've been thinking about friendship this week. 


The precipitating cause is this: Philip Yancey (the quite well-known Christian author) is preaching at Bidwell Presbyterian this Sunday morning. But he's not bringing the word at our evening worship service, the 545. So that leaves a gap. And I need to fill that gap and preach in the evening. So I scoured the book of Philippians to find a text we hadn't used yet in our series and came across the beautiful section in chapter 2 where Paul describes his relationship with Timothy and Epaphroditus.

It's raining outside in Chico as I type.
Probably why I chose this image

The second inspiration is this: Eugene Peterson, as he led the consultation last weekend, reminded us that Jesus finished his teaching with his disciples by calling them friends in the gospel of John (chapter 15). "I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father." As Eugene puts it, that's a relational way of describing God--the God we know who exists as a relationship among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I find that an excellent reminder about God and about a truly good life.


And it's a reminder that brings me back to Philippians 2:19-30 and these two friends of Paul, who supported him as he journeyed around the ancient Roman Empire, shared the message of Jesus, and eventually got imprisoned. When you do that kind of thing, you need some friends!


Let me focus on Timothy, particularly three characteristics that make him a good friend: Paul calls him isopsychos (literally, “same soul,” “equal”), which is an echo of Psalm 55.13, “But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend….” Timothy is also one who is "anxious" for the well-being of his fellow Christians in Philippi... which they need during a particularly poignant time. (It's the same Greek word as in Philippians 4:6, so “being anxious” as a general case is not a problem--we just have to decide what we're going to be "anxious" or "concerned" about.) His conclusion about Timothy? And I love this: “But you yourselves know that Timothy’s the real thing.” Timothy is authentic--the inside and the outside match. He's the kind of friends we all love to have.


So I go back to last weekend, and the consultation with Eugene Peterson and Albert Borgmann on technology. Here's the problem technology presents: it can take us away from real human relationships. We'd rather text than talk, or check Facebook than get together, let alone define "friends" as "Facebook does. When technology enhances what we do face-to-face, that's a different story, but we are created to have friends, and I'm grieved to see a society that has become increasingly lonely and separated, sometimes because it's technologically proficient.


Because the nature of God is relational, because God has called us friends, and because we are designed to have good friends. That's one thing the God's community, the church, at its best, can offer--real relationships.


I think I'll just post this and maybe revise it later... leaving it for now as essentially some random musings...

Jesus and Eugene Peterson Aren’t that Impressive. But Tech Is. That’s the Problem.

One of the things about Jesus is that he’s not very impressive.

Now please don’t get me wrong—I (almost) never fail to marvel at Jesus’s stunning insights into our nature as human beings. Because of course Christ the Word became flesh, became human.

Somehow that brings me to the consultation on technology and faith I just took part in at beautiful Laity Lodge in the Hill Country of Texas. In truth, the speakers were a little bit disappointing. Or maybe better simply human. And the element of humanity is always a bit disappointing in light of the dazzle of technology. Like the new iPod--it's better than the first generation… the one I own. It’s faster, thinner, and doesn’t require any of that irritating boot-up time (like 2 seconds). That’s cool and exciting.

So, yes, it was in some ways disappointing. Borgmann was really nice and quite thoughtful. But I didn’t feel my heart pump faster when he lectured. Peterson’s voice is gravelly and a little underwhelming. I reported on Facebook that I received the Lord’s Supper from him. But I’ve had better celebrants. I’ve definitely heard more impressive speakers. In fact, one of his major themes is the unimpressive in the quotidian.

I learned that we need to be careful of technology because it so often promises immediacy and thrill and obscures the ordinary and the human. Borgmann rightly calls us back to “focal practices” based on the Latin word focus or “hearth” where we gather together for warm, for meals, and for human companionship. Peterson brought us back to Jesus’s language of “friends” in his last night on earth—an entirely relational language, where ordinary human beings relate to one another. He reminded us that Jesus took significant time in the last week of his life—as recorded in Luke’s Gospel—to spend hours and days with the Samaritans, those “bastards” of faith (to use Peterson’s language), those half-siblings of the Jews. He closed with the parable where the farmer doesn’t give up on the plant that doesn’t grow, but decides to add more manure. Manure—something that doesn’t impress. Or even attracts. But in this parable, manure offers the possibility of growth and new life. I heard a testimony from another participant who, in a time of deep personal crisis was riding a horse and saw a pile of manure with a tomato plant growing in it. (I’m not kidding.) At that moment, God spoke: “I can do much more through a pile of manure than I can do through you all your best efforts.” I hope I can capture how powerful a testimony that was.

And what was most significant at the conference? The human interactions with some people who subtly impressed me. People who listened. People who cared about God’s mission in this world. Some liked technology (the technophiles); others were more restrained, or even fearful (techophobes). But above all, they cared about people.

Do you know what was best? The musicians. It all began with singing the hymns—those great collections of faith that have sustained Christians in worship for decades. And then I heard from Andy (and later, his wife Jill) Gullahorn. The latter opened with a song that seemed to open a place in my heart, “Someone to You.” He sang, “I can be nobody as long as I’m someone to You.” Tears came to my eyes. There it was—in the end, we can be human (and, so often, unimpressive) to one another because we belong to God. That’s when we become someone. I can only paraphrase at the moment, but one of my great mentors of faith, Karl Barth, started the Barmen Declaration with something like this: Jesus Christ, as he is attested in the Scripture, is the one Word of God we have to hear and obey.

I wonder if all this is actually quite significant. Was Jesus’s voice unimpressive as Eugene Peterson’s? Might the center of life be as mundane as having the focal practice as sharing a meal together? Might technology bring us nice toys, which at their best enhance our work and life as we respond to God, but nonetheless represent some things—because they dazzles and impress—that we might tempted to worship as idols?

I close with this: I’m in the process of completing my forties, and I’m getting less and less willing to waste time in things that aren’t important and life-giving. May I be ready to find the truly significant. May I find something growing right in the midst of what is entirely unimpressive.

Do Things You Love to Do

I'm at a consultation where the philosopher Albert Borgmann is speaking on technology and faith. Below is how I interacted with his thought in Say Yes to No: 

One of the best steps to a healthy spiritual rhythm is to remember what you love to do and to do it.

Help for our imprisonment to our techie toys can come from unexpected places. At least it did for me. I first really began to engage in this topic when I was invited to a consultation with Albert Borgmann. Professor Borgmann represents an unusual type of professional philosopher—the kind who brings together running in the mountains of Montana with analyzing Martin Heidegger’s weighty (and largely incomprehensible) philosophical tome, Being and Time. In March 2001, I was invited to a consultation with Borgmann on science, technology and its effect on contemporary life. This bright-eyed, ebullient seventy-something has developed a powerful concept, a “focal practice.” What is it? “Focal” is derived from the Latin word for “hearth,” the focus, in the Roman world, where the family met for cooking, for warming the house, for conversing. Today instead we punch in the numbers for the digital thermostat; my daughters codes the microwave for her quesadillas at 5:45, I “nuke” Lean Cuisine at 6:20, and my wife warms pasta at 6:40. And it’s possible for no one to eat together. In the early days of TV, we at least used to sit together and watch Jackie Gleason in the Honeymooners. Now each member in a house has a separate monitor on a different cable channel or DVD. Borgmann says that our technology—which we believe has simplified life so that we could spend time together—actually draws us apart. But focal practices draw us to our true selves. They draw us together. He counsels the use of focal practices with the questions, “Would you rather be doing something else right now?” If so, you are not engaged in focal practices.

A focal practice is something of ultimate concern and significance, which is often masked by technology’s appeal. It must be preserved by its connection with actually doing it.  Borgmann puts it this way: “Focal things require a practice to prosper within.” His examples include music, gardening, long-distance running, and “the culture of the table” (meaning taking more time than simply nuking leftovers or driving up to Jack-in-the-Box). These examples are often plain and inconspicuous, in contrast to the awe-inspiring things on which our ancestors were focused, such as temples and cathedrals. Borgmann adds a note of realism that technology seduces: “Countering technology through a practice is to take account of our susceptibility to technological distraction, and it is also to engage the peculiarly human strength of comprehension, i.e. the power to take in the world in its extent and significance and to respond through an enduring commitment.” Translated: it’s not easy to do. We even resist it. It’s easy to plop down with our kids in front of a TV, call for pizza delivery and watch Lord of the Rings on video. And sometimes that’s a great idea. But when technology single-handedly sets the agenda, we lose the key rhythms of life.

Use the Power of No to Restrict Technology’s Reach

I'm about to attend a conference on technology and the spiritual life, where--among others--we'll hear from the philosopher Albert Borgmann. (If you want a quick intro to Borgmann, go here.) I was reminded of a related chapter I wrote in Say Yes to No, which I've "reprinted below." (And you can always feel free to buy the whole book. Just in case you were wondering....)

It seems we are more addicted to entertainment than previous generations. (It goes along with an affluent culture.) Nonetheless, there are similarities about the human condition through various times. We haven’t really gone further than the insights of the 17^th century scientist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, who lived when modern science—and its promise of technological salvation—began to peer into our world. This brilliant scientist and devout Christian possessed such extraordinary sensitivity into human motivations that his four hundred year old collection of reflections, Pensées, remains a perennial bestseller. In it, Pascal offers this succinct and piercing assessment of our condition, “I have often said that the sole cause of human unhappiness is that we do not how to stay quietly in a room.”

That’s a hauntingly accurate insight and one worth attempting. Try sitting in a room. No TV. No stereo. No Internet. In a weird way, the lack of distractions is distracting. Our minds wander. We become twitchy and uncomfortable. So we seek distractions. Tellingly, in Pascal’s own language French, the word distraction means “separation, subtraction, absence of mind, inattention, heedlessness, diversion, hobby.” And so we seek increasing amounts of hobbies to make us inattentive. One Microsoft executive coined a term for this state, “continuous partial attention.” Or inattention. This drive is demonstrated most notably in the lives of the rich and famous and for—the hoi polloi—our tremendous fascination with them. Pascal believed that this inherent, uncontrolled restlessness drove women and men toward wealth and worldly success:

That, in fact, is the main joy of being a king [insert rock star, CEO], because people are continually trying to divert him and procure him every kind of pleasure. A king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to divert him and stop him thinking about himself, because, king though he is, he becomes unhappy as soon as he thinks about himself.

I suspect that’s one reason people want to win the Lotto: to seek distraction from their problems.

            But at some point, the distractions cease and it’s just you. With palpable wit and humor, Anne Lamott reviewed her life of addictions and obsessions as a means of battling “aloneness.” Ultimately, she arrives at a strikingly similar diagnosis as Pascal with a different flavor. She tested all kinds of things to distract herself from aloneness “in sometimes suicidally vast quantities—alcohol, drugs, work, food, excitement, good deeds, popularity, men, exercise, and just rampant compulsion and obsession.” For awhile it seemed to work; “And I did pretty well, although I nearly died. But then recently that aloneness walked right into my house without knocking, sat down, and stayed a couple of weeks.” In find this last image of aloneness staying with us provocative. There comes a point where we can no longer hide and every technological device cannot keep out the demons. We do all we can to avoid confronting aloneness… which is one reason we need real friendships.

            Nevertheless, all these technological advances are fascinating, aren’t they? And increasingly, they’re just cute. Something so small and endearing can’t be evil. The new iPod shuffle is advertised for its tiny-ness. Hardly bigger than a quarter. Up to 240 songs. Hangs on your back pocket.

Or pick a movie—the 1987 Wall Street for example—and grok that behemoth mobile phone on the ear of Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas). While “Greed is good” Gecko walks on the beach, he controls the destiny of companies simultaneously and gets a workout. Compare that device with the parody in 2001 Zoolander of the micro-size cell phone, which looks about the size and heft of a matchbook. Technology in its cuteness and ease insidiously wheedles their way into our lives.

They’re also new. Imbedded in our thinking is the evolutionary dogma that newer is better. So we trust in the recent, the fresh. And with technology, I’d be hard-pressed to defeat the contention that my previous laptop zipped through my programs and websites as the one I’m typed on right now.  I placed above the picture of what the RAND Corporation proposed in 1954 as the look and size of a potential “home computer” in 2004. By my lights, it was ten feet tall and twelve feet wide, and when you add the gargantuan dot matrix printer (and a steering wheel that looked like it was taken from Giligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow), it would fill most of a small bedroom. 

So what’s the immediate conclusion? “Look how fast science and technology move—even quicker than we could expect.” But, God and all things spiritual, seem, well, so old… and therefore inferior. I doubt we’d admit our bias that directly, but we might state that technology obviously progresses and religion just stays the same.  So a technological prejudice lurks around our lives and can stifle spiritual health.

            Now, as I’ve already confessed, I realize the difficulty at putting techie toys aside for me. I love gadgets. I don’t think they’re Satan with transistors and silicon chips. To have a portable device that carries hundreds of songs is still amazing. It almost achieves the category of “miracle.” I’m old enough to remember the advent of the Walkman and how astounding that moment was as we snuck into the library, studied for finals, listening all the while to Toto and Hall and Oates. I like to make calls when I’m in my car. To be connected is to be productive. I live in a technological world. As I type this into my laptop, iTunes plays music downloaded from the web on the hard drive, my cell phone rests in my briefcase, and two email accounts are retrieving messages (with an enormous quantity of spam).

So I find these gadgets really helpful. Despite how much I used the power of no to weed out unnecessary elements in my life, I’m still reasonably busy. And I have a lot of tasks to attend to. If I can save some time through email and cell phones, I may actually find some for activities I really enjoy. And technology can make me more productive, especially with all the options available for communication. I still marvel at email and the wonder of sending the same document with efficient simultaneity to a committee in preparation for a meeting, and of checking in briefly with friends across massive distances without stamps, envelopes, and annoying time delay. When I arrive at work, my first thought is whether I’ve received any exciting emails. (Naturally, I’m not nearly as thrilled about spam.) It’s a direct way to connect with hundreds of people. Office voicemail eliminates the problem of calling someone at 10pm (which frankly is when I often have time to return calls). And I have a particular weakness for cell phones. I mean, my wife, Laura, could reach me on my cell even when was biking home through Central Park.

            And yet, to be honest, there’s a downside: these alternatives often complicate instead of simplify our lives. The ease of communicating becomes a curse. At times I feel obligated to check messages on the email accounts 24/7. ITunes doesn’t load properly, and I spend two hours of frustration making sure I can download my next recording effortlessly. Laura and I spend a week of frustration and experience collateral marital damage trying to load Windows.

Nonetheless, as Lamott and Pascal point out, it’s also about boredom. When I sit by myself, I’m challenged by silence, by inner desires and fears. I don’t like quiet. It’s disturbing. I want to be entertained. It’s probably also about fear. I’m afraid that deep down I’m missing something when I’m not plugging into the iPod or letting the music from my computer fill the air. I tremble at the thought of missing the up-to the minute Dow report or of having someone send an email that doesn’t get a 30-minute-or-less response. Will they think I’m inefficient? Will I miss out?

            So, as a family, we have created a few guidelines to restrict technology’s reach. We ignore the phone at dinner. We limit our kids’ “screen time” (computers, TVs, iPods) during the day so that our lives aren’t one continuous video feed. We find that a couple of hours a day is a good target. And, as yet, there is not Wii or XBox in our house. A friend takes a weekly Sabbath from email, and so we too have blackout hours from Entourage and Outlook. The net result? A fuller, richer, more centered life.

Whose Are You?

I've been thinking about citizenship recently as I muse on two passages from the book of Philippians. First the Apostle Paul's exhortation to this group of house churches in ancient European city of Philippi:

Only, live your civic or public life worthy of the gospel of Christ. (1:27; I added italics and elaboration)

And then Paul lays out the contrast between the life of the citizens of the "secular city" (to use Augustine's term) and that of followers of Jesus--particularly whose they are:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. (3:20-21, again, my italics)

I've been thinking about this because I'm working on a sermon for our presbytery (the regional gathering of our denomination). I'm asking the question: What do we need to hear in light of some contentious political battles in our denomination? It seems to me we need to hear about freedom. We need to hear about our citizenship about how to answer "Whose are we?" The answer: we're free for God and therefore free from being defined by human associations so that we can be free to re-engage in this world with love and service. When we know we ultimately belong to God then we can serve this world more effectively, worthy of the Gospel.


At least that's how I see it. What do you think?

Real Stars

"Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life" (Philippians 2:15).


I've been thinking about stars recently--you know the kind we see in movies and tv, the ones who sing. The ones whose names are in our minds as the Academy Awards loom. Someone like Aaron Rodgers, are homegrown Chico kid, who's leading the Green Bay Packers to the Super Bowl next weekend. Why do we idolize them? What's the basis of their star power? Here's what I think: At its best, the fame of stars makes us yearn for their influence, to make a difference in the world. (At the worst, they give us an excuse not to do anything with our lives... but I'll save that for another post.)

So that brings me to this passage from Paul's writings where he tells the early Christian community in Philippi (now in Macedonian) that they could "shine like stars," that they could give their light to the world around them. In other words, that their light wouldn't be for their own sake, but for the benefit of others.

And to the right are some real stars--some of our college students at Chico State and Butte (along with a few advisors) who took a week of their winter break (specifically January 16-22) to build houses for four poor families in Baja California. They took a week where they could easily have been skiing, sitting at the beach, watching video games, or a host of other distractions. Instead they decide to serve others. And I can tell you, it made a difference to those families who received the keys to their new houses with tears in their eyes. 


And that gives me hope. In my eyes, those, and many like them, are the real stars.

The Glorious Mish-Mash

I've just finished reading C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle, the final installment of The Chronicles of Narnia, and I'm thankful.

I'm thankful for the wonderful jumble of images and stories that Lewis strings together--the ones he combined in ways that offended his highly meticulous friend and co-writer, J. R. R. Tolkien. (What comes to mind first is the sudden emergence of Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.) Ultimately--despite all appearances to the contrary, the Chronicles ends well with The Last Battle.

I'm reminded that Lewis was a Renaissance and Medieval scholar (although he had some misgivings about the very existence of a "renaissance" in western Europe as a discrete period), a time when images, symbols, and stories ran together in a crazy potpourri.

I'm remembering that life really is a mish-mash, just like the Middle Ages reminded us. Have you ever been to New York City's Cloisters museum? It's a wonderful reconstruction of three cloisters. In those transcendent medieval quadrangles,  each column is different. Their glorious mish-mash contrasts marked from the rational, homogenizing similarity of the Enlightenment.

I'm grateful because it draws me back to the reality of life--it's never too rational or too uniform, and yet somehow it's unified by the will of our good God. It's this God that promises us victory and meaning at the last.

That's why I love the glorious mish-mash narratives of C. S. Lewis especially on this final day of 2010, which is also my birthday, when I seek to make sense of the year that's passed. Too often things appear as a variegated jumble of experiences and moments, but I trust that God holds them together the glorious mish-mash of life.

C. S. Lewis and the Future of Forestry

Just last night, I experienced an amazing concert at Chico's El Rey Theatre by the band, Future of Forestry (for more on them, go here). Since they derive their name from an obscure poem by that great Christian muse of the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis, it sparked my creative Lewisian juices and got me off my blogging butt. (This site has remained dormant for almost a month.) So here goes....


I start with the opening lines from Lewis

How will the legend of the age of trees

Feel, when the last tree falls in England?

When the concrete spreads and the town conquers

The country’s heart....

These lines, penned in 1938, presciently peer into our day and into my mind. When I lament the fixation of children today on Wii, the teens on their smartphones, and the college students on their iPods, and me on my omnipresent and omniscient iPhone, I wonder how disconnected we all have become from nature. 


Lewis wonders if it's not only an alienation from nature but also from the certain stories. Has our mastery over nature through science and its scion, technology, not actually mastered us, by muting our essential connection with nature and thereby silencing the stories that nature inspires?

The questioning children, “What was a chestnut?

Say what it means to climb a Beanstalk,

Tell me, grandfather, what an elm is.

What was Autumn? They never taught us.”

Because, as Lewis points out, there is something almost magical--and certainly something divine--imbedded as an act of ongoing creation in the forests and in the mountains. I know this as I go walking among the hills and the trees of Chico's Bidwell Park. 


And as the band Future of Forestry celebrated last night, in a glorious, wall-of-sound Christmas paean of praise, "Joy to the World," it is during this season, this time of celebrating God's coming and dwelling with us in human flesh, that "heaven and earth shall sing." 


Just this morning, in an unrelated context, I read Psalm 50, verse 2 that describes the God who "shone forth from Zion" as "the zenith of beauty" (50:2). It is in nature where often I see God's beauty, where I find myself in a return to that unmitigated glory of original creation. 


In the just-published Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis, Michael Guite finds a linking of Lewis's poetry and contemporary "deep ecology," where, Lewis presents that, through nature, and as we are redeemed in Christ, we become connected with nature's profound, primary truths. Lewis concludes his poem by wondering if, this industrial, technological age hasn't lost connection with the rest of creation and thus with something poignant and essential. 

Of goblins stalking in silky green,

Of milk-sheen froth upon the lace of hawthorn’s

Collar, pallor in the face of birchgirl.

So shall a homeless time, though dimly

Catch from afar (for soul is watchfull)

A sight of tree-delighted Eden.

In sum: Lewis poses just the right question for us, What will be the future of forestry?