I'd be the first to admit I'm pedantic - words are very important to me and the phrase "say what you mean and mean what you say" is never far from my consciousness. Not that I'm perfect at doing this - far from it - nor am I entirely consistent and frequently fall into the attitude trap of "do what I say and not what I do". But then, don't we all! This graph to the right cut a little too close for comfort. In recent weeks in some of my online messaging (as opposed to emails where one tends to give the words a little more care), I've found myself living on the right hand side of the graph: I agree, but I don't like how someone else is crafting the words to articulate the issue - I feel they've constructed the wrong emphases, or placed a different spin on the discussion that leaves me saying "but, but ..." This dilemma is an inadequacy arising from the intersection of the pace of life and the requirements of language - we use emojis and cryptic shorthand, with incomplete statements that leave so much to be assumed. We don't give language enough time to complete its communication purpose, and so live out our stationary lives in a frenzied stew of sound bites. Where does this fit in with the spiritual Christian? Well, (too infrequently) we're communicating with the non-Christian (left hand side of the graph), and while the rhetoric can get heated, by and large the level of conflict usually doesn’t get too intense. However, our communication is often embarrassingly one-dimensional and of little depth, which perhaps unproductively helps keep the conflict low. On the other hand, a large proportion of Christians spend their time in the presumed safe zone of the right hand side of the graph. There we say we agree, yet we become heated in our exchanges over the perceived inadequacies of someone else's articulation, upset over the emphases inferred, and feel that our personal priorities are challenged. I confess I love the left hand side of the graph and avoid the right hand side as much as possible! Yet Jesus prayed that we would be unified. (Sigh) I guess he prays for us on the right hand side because that is the more difficult side of the graph. Co-exploration through thoughtful dialogue between unlike-minded people: now there's a good path to practical humility. (Because why debate with those who are like-minded? You've agreed on the answer and are merely creating an echo chamber).
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I was applauded this week, and complimented. Strangers came up to me to say nice things and express their appreciation. Yet all I had done was put words to thoughts - truths I had found both relevant and significant. People had evidently felt some essence of these, but not seen the skeleton that gives it shape.
There are truths that are relevant, truths that are significant, and truths that just are. There's a power plug I know of ... in the wall of a room on the other side of the planet. That's true, but irrelevant and of no significance. Until, of course, I visit there again and need to charge my tablet. Context brings relevance, need determines significance. We are surrounded by so many truths - details and facts bombard us incessantly - and the challenge is to filter out those which deserve attention. So in my context I listen, observe, question and explore the thread of logic in order to decide what is relevant, and which are significant. And then I try put words to these. It seems people clapped this week as if I had pulled a rabbit out of the proverbial hat. But it wasn't my rabbit, and the hat is always there. Yet some people seem scared to reach in and take hold of the rabbit, and would rather spend their time on describing the hat, measuring it, and talking about it's shape and colour. All of these facts are truths, none are really relevant, and there's no significance. The rabbit is inside the hat twitching its ears; the hat is merely the container. All one needs to do is reach inside and take hold. Of course, then you'll be holding a truth that's alive, and truths change lives. You'll have to feed the rabbit, interact with it, and embarrassedly explain to others why you're holding a rabbit and where you found it. The reality of what was once hidden changes everything, because a rabbit will not easily go back inside the hat. I was sitting on a plane listening to Jessica Lamb isolate me from home. At 500 miles per hour the ground was passing by and all I could think was holy, holy, while the world decides you're a fable, a figment, a mythical comfort for those who don't think. Yet how do I explain that the values of pain and suffering from greed and gain are not the simple relative values they'd like to define, and say That the passion of our yearnings are either devoid of meaning or else, or else grounded in an absolute of good and consequence. I know a few people who choose not to read books by non-Christian authors (reflecting, I presume, their broader attitudes to music, workplace, friends).
My reaction: Huh? I get it that they prioritize the Bible (at least in theory), and I can agree that some Christian authors provide valuable insight (perhaps not as often as we might hope). I also acknowledge some non-Christian authors are simply gross, crass, and trite. But to avoid all non-Christian authors? This seems wrong to me on so many levels. The only reason I can fathom is if one is of so weak an intellect as to be unable to reason toward Truth – with such a pliable brain reading a non-Christian author may indeed be dangerous. There may be some people with such flaccid minds – I don't know any. There are, however, those for whom a lack of exercise in reasoning makes them weak and vulnerable - like grossly overweight intellectual couch potatoes who get exhausted at the mere hint of mental exertion. Society doesn’t help with the continuous stream of stimuli - this makes it like putting an alcoholic beneath the open tap of a beer keg. And we coddle our children: indoctrinating them with our undeserved authority while never considering for a moment that we might ourselves be in error - we shield them from all that is truly terrible (for Truth can be terrible). Often its only the surgery of a personal crisis that can sometimes brings the porridge-minded to their rational senses. There are so many reasons to read non-Christian authors. The first reason that comes to my mind is, of course, that all the leading Christian writers of this and past ages have themselves read non-Christian literature, and honed their perspective against a backdrop of non-Christian viewpoints. Perhaps the two leading examples are Lewis and Chesterton, authors on whom many contemporary Christian writers are grounded. These two thinkers were tested by their contemporary non-Christian literature, and steeped in the ancient writings of Norse and Greek mythology - writings of the mystic and magic that were both deeply hedonistic and full of virtue. Without this, today we would never have such treasures as Chesterton's “Orthodoxy”. Imagine if he had ignored the writings of modernists and atheists like G.B Shaw and others, or secluded himself from secular society. For writers such as these the non-Christian literature was their training ground to hone the biblical truths which shaped their thinking – "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another". Why do we think we should be excused such rigours to train our minds? Second, one might also argue that it is unbiblical to read only Christian authors, perhaps even Pharisaical? For how else does one approach Paul's 1Cor 9:20-23 which requires one to understand the non-Chrisatian viewpoint – to stand in their shoes. Or how does one even begin to speak to the world at large without understanding where they come from. To not try and understand the non-Christian's perspective is to not be compassionate (and if nothing else, Jesus was compassionate). This is the trap of prideful arrogance which says “I don't need to exert myself to know another’s perspective, my perspective is enough”. But Jesus says to be in the world and not of the world – that distinction is only possible if one understands both sides of the coin. There are few saints who were saints from birth – in many cases the measure of their saintliness is rooted in how well they understood what it means to not be a saint! This is not an argument to become debauched for the sake of experiencing the flip side of goodness, but is an argument to wrestle with understanding what it is like to be trapped in the hunt of hedonism. Are you really able to see how the world must look through the eyes of a contemporary teenager, where acceptance and sex and pleasures and looks and clothes and the ever demanding relativistic “now” are paramount? Pause before you say “Yes I can”, and think: can you empathise with the desires they must feel, the angst and the pain of peer pressures, can you feel it? Emotions are an exceptionally powerful force among those who feel dependent. Have you felt what its like to be drunk with ambition, known the despair of depression or felt the loneliness of a crowd, experienced the mob mentality behind the verbal and physical abuse of the weak, or sensed the slippery slope that leads one to treat people as things? For these forces drive people to unspeakable, yet understandable decisions. The writing of non-Christians can powerfully help us see into these lives, and find compassion. Christians like to say that Jesus has compassion on everyone because he knows all that we experience. And we are to be like Jesus? He elected the company of the irreligious and outcasts over the safety and security of like-minded society. Why should we do any different? Of course we need to guard ourselves, to not go where have have not the strength to face it. But guarding oneself is not the same as isolating oneself! Third, to say one will only read Christian authors is to say that Christian authors alone are able to speak truth. This attitude flirts with the afore mentioned trap of prideful arrogance, and dangerously presumes that “I am well able to sift the wheat from the chaff of Christian writings”; for Christian writings can contain glimmers of truth but mostly in a sugar coating of platitudes, or else is outright heretical. Non-Christians provide valuable material on which to test the real sharpness of the “truths” that are promulgated by the diverse writers of the Christian faith. Fourth, to choose to ignore Christian authors is to possibly lose out on new insight into the nature of the human spirit. From Socrates' rationalism of one God, to Shakespeare's timeless bawdy tales of common society, and further to the insightful societal commentary of those like Terry Pratchett, we find truth exposed if we have the eye to see it. Consider just this one example, where a priest is arguing for shades of moral gray (as so many contemporary Christian writers are doing); this is a non-Christian's perspective presented in the form of a dialogue: "It's not as simple as that, it's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of grey." "Nope." "Pardon?" "There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself" "It's a lot more complicated then that---" "No. It ain't. When people say things are more complicated than that, they mean they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts." "Oh. I'm sure there are worse crimes---" "But they start with thinking about people as things .." There stands a much needed message for the Christian faith to hear, and it comes from an atheist author! For human nature is so often better expressed by non-Christian writers who are unconstrained by religious niceties, compared to the sanitized pandering we see all too often from Christian authors. Fifth, if we insulate ourselves in a closeted zone of security (and not only in our reading) then we might find ourselves the object of the following quote: “[then] not only does the individual become narrow, he spreads narrowness across the world like a cloud, he causes narrowness to increase and multiply like a weed.” “Instead of the liberty of dogma [well wrestled and examined], you have the tyranny of taste.” “For modern society is almost made up of these large monochrome patches”. So written in an essay on the fact that begins “A fixed creed is absolutely indispensable to freedom.” A fixed creed – yes, there is a real world bigger than what we see, an unexplored country of rich truths that never contradict the foundations of black and white truth. But hiding ourselves in a canyon of self defined boundaries is (to repeat myself) like being lost in the Pharisaical maze of narrow passages, never finding the exit into the broader world of reality, and at what loss? Lastly (although there is so much more that could be said), we are all so, so susceptible to confirmation bias when we only read what we want to hear. This is the dark tunnel that leads to lonely echo-chambers which parrot our voice over and over, where we deny what makes us uncomfortable, live a life in Plato's cave of shadows where the sin of overconfidence leads to hurting judgementalism. To close: there is Truth with a capital T, a right and a wrong, or so I believe. The grey areas are only where we've yet to find the courage to let the light shine. Yet we are vulnerable to making Truth in our image merely to satisfy our preferences and prejudices. Truth stands independent of our likes and is infused through all of creation. Yes, it gets distorted and dirty in the hands of some, and the Christian community is in no way innocent of this, while the non-Christian community is also not void of reflecting Truth. For we are all somewhere on the road between utter darkness and pure light. There are those who would like to stand in one particular patch of sunlight. But Christians are called to run a race and train their eye to see deeper – yet we prefer to stay like babes drinking milk instead of joining in the glorious hunt for meat. We may get injured, but it is also how we grow strong. Like an artist practising brush stroke after brush stroke to find what best reflects reality, like a photographer who explores the myriad of compositions to find the the essence of the scene, or like the musician who over and over practices scales to imbibe the true tonal nature of music, so it is for all of us to train for the race which, if entered, must of necessity pass through those troubled lands of the non-christian mind. There's a point to this story, but context is needed.
I travel a lot, and of course one of the awkward times is when you arrive in a foreign city, you've yet to meet colleagues, and its dinner time. What do you do? Going out alone to a nice restaurant in a foreign country can be uncomfortable; sitting at a table by yourself, no where to look and no conversation to keep you busy - many times it's easier to just get a takeaway. Sometimes its nice … two nights ago I was sitting on a veranda in Rotterdam, overlooking water with a nice glass of wine and enjoying my solitude. Today its Hamburg; busy, vibrant, crowded, and with the Germans seemingly a minority population compared to all the migrants on the street. The sidewalk restaurants are filled with groups and couples engaged in animated discussion, courtship, or after something else more basic. So I headed for the nearest transport hub – there's always acceptable food to be found there that tailors for the single traveller. There I sat with my gigantic German sausage and chips, with the ice hockey match between Germany and Canada being broadcast on big screens. Not being a huge fan, I was looking around and saw a reflection in a mirror across the room. After a double take I realized it was me, because at first it didn't look like the me I carry around in my head. The me as seen from the inside is the me that drives all I am. Yet I am so unused to the external visage that from the outside I looked like a stranger. I have to say I find the insiders view of me far more attractive than the external. I play a game sometimes when I travel; I look at people's heads and speculate on what sort of conversation is going on inside. Sadly, so many people seem to choose to surround themselves with distractions; buried in their cell phones and immersed in earphones playing who knows what. I sometimes think it's a wonder that any heads have much of value going on inside at all – perhaps they're all simply becoming overloaded sensory processing machines and losing their ability for higher rational thought? Anyway, that issue aside, it started me thinking about how, in all probability, everyone else's internal views of themselves are also hugely different to how I first see them. When we develop a new relationship with someone, all we have to begin with is the external – it takes a long time to discover the internal perspective. Only when someone allows you into their head can you begin to get a glimmer of what they really look like. And that makes me wonder, do some people even let themselves into their own heads? For so many people seem to not have any perspective of what they look like inside. It takes courage to look at the view inside your head: it can give you a shock. And, as has been said, “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.” That's why I think so many people don't see the view inside, because so few people seem to have a desire to live and so few people have a readiness to die. Instead, it seems many people are competing to have the best external appearance of living. Yet the inside view is what they really look like to God. No wonder he has compassion. |
Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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