Points to Ponder - The Problem of Pain

Different ages excelled in different virtues. If, then, you are ever tempted to think that we modern Western Europeans cannot really be so very bad because we are, comparatively speaking, humane - if, in other words, you think God might be content with us on that ground - ask yourself whether you think God ought to have been content with the cruelty of cruel ages because they excelled in courage or chastity. From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors looks to us, you may get some inkling how our softness, worldliness, and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to God.

C.S. Lewis The Problem of Pain, pg. 58 (Harper Collins)

Merry Christmas!

Whew! My busiest semester yet is finally over. In two weeks I'll have to start again, but for now I at last have a chance to catch my breath, spend time with my wife and daughter, perhaps even write a few blog posts (has it really been a month since the last one?). As a start, here are two Christmas-related stories that caught my eye:

As it turns out, this central Christian holiday really does make us happier--imagine that! No offense to George Bailey and Charlie Brown, but depression and suicide rates actually decrease around Christmas.

Also, apparently even Richard Dawkins enjoys singing Christmas carols. I’d love to see a youtube clip of the arch-atheist himself singing:

Joy to the world, the Lord has come!
Let earth receive her king!
Let every heart prepare him room!
And heaven and nature sing!

Journeyman

There’s not much on TV that I care about anymore, but NBC’s Journeyman has quickly become a favorite. Airing on Mondays at 10pm, the show is vaguely reminiscent of Quantum Leap, but with a number of twists (and no body-snatching). It tells the story of San Francisco reporter Dan Vassar (well played by Kevin McKidd), who suddenly and uncontrollably finds himself jumping back in time. With no more warning than a headache, he is repeatedly transported to some earlier time, stays for a short while, and then returns to the present.

Dan has no more idea why this is happening than we do, but he quickly discovers that his jumps are anything but random. Each time, he finds himself at some significant (often tragic) moment in another person’s life, and he usually follows that same person through several such events before moving on to a new “mark.” No one tells him who, how or why to help, but as he follows his “intuition,” things usually work out better than “the first time around.”

Besides the obvious drama these trips engender, additional tensions arise from the curious fact that Dan does not return to exactly the same time and place that he left, which means he is routinely missing for hours or even days at a time. This, of course, leads to all sorts of awkward questions and frustrations (not to mention, fortuitous escapes), especially when he discovers that his ex-fiancée Olivia, whom he thought had died in a plane crash, also travels through time with him.

These things keep the show exciting, but the real fascination lies in the mystery surrounding these “trips.” What or who causes them? How is it that Dan always shows up at just the right time and place to do the most good? How is such travel possible at all? What role does Livia play in all of this, and why does she so often come to the same places as Dan? Though we’ve been given some vague hints – particularly from a certain eccentric astrophysicist who occasionally drops in on Dan's life – most of these questions are as yet unanswered, leaving my wife and I with plenty to speculate about as we go to bed every Monday.

In all of this, Journeyman proves to be a surprisingly wholesome addition to prime-time television. Despite the relational tensions explored, there is no question of the importance of faithfulness, and Dan remains deeply committed to his wife and son. Perhaps more significantly, Dan’s selfless assistance of the people he tracks is central to the show. He occasionally (and understandably) grows frustrated with whatever “cosmic power” is making him “do its dirty work,” but even so, he routinely sacrifices his own safety to save these strangers. Indeed, in a few episodes he has even tried to save people he wasn’t sent to help, at great personal cost and despite Olivia’s warnings about the dangers of such a course.

Yet perhaps the most interesting aspects of the show, given the generally atheistic assumptions of most television, are the metaphysical questions it raises. All time travel stories are mind-bending in one way or another, but by leaving the means of travel undisclosed, Journeman adds a further level of interest. For even if Dan’s trips are so far unexplained, that doesn’t mean that just any explanation would fit. His jumps are not random, and the fact that he always goes back to precisely those times and places necessary to save people, points to some sort of conscious will behind the process. Though Dan does not control these jumps, it seems clear that someone does, and that someone is not only exceedingly intelligent and powerful, but also very concerned with saving the lives of even the lowliest of people.

Of course, this is only science fiction, but that sounds a lot like the Christian God. Yet the form of the argument is oddly familiar: Though we don’t know how this unnamed power sends Dan back in time, we can be certain they are doing so intentionally, because the “coincidences” are just too numerous to be accidental. This, it turns out, is precisely what Intelligent Design proponents claim about life on earth: that the purposeful nature of life points to design even while such evidence alone is not enough to prove who or how. In the history of life, as in Journeyman, we cannot help but ask how such things are possible (a fact that ID theorists too often forget), but in both cases the evident purposefulness of the process requires that any valid explanation must also involve a who.

Assuming the show survives long enough to raise the issue, you can bet that the only way we will ever know the true identity of the one behind the scenes is if they choose to reveal it. The argument from design can only go so far; apart from some form of revelation, all that remains is speculation. Though perhaps that's half the fun.

UPDATE: Corrected 11/23 to fix a couple typos an a factual error pointed out by my brother.

The Revenge of Conscience

I stumbled upon this classic article while working on a paper on Numbers 31 (a horrifying passage!). As I remain embroiled in said paper, I'll present this without comment, but it is well worth reading: The Revenge of Conscience by J. Budziszewski (First Things 1998).

Everyone's Doing It

Ok, I'll jump on the bandwagon. I was gonna say this thing is random (Salvo is graded "Genius" while Signs of the Times is "Junior High Level," even though they're written by the same people), but as it turns out, I am a graduate student.... Anyway, I think it looks cool. :)

Cash Advance Loans

Taking Things "on Faith"

This is a very busy week month for me, so while I work on my Thesis proposal, I’ll let someone else do the talking. Here is a post by James McGrath with which I agree entirely. He argues that biblical faith is not about believing things without evidence, but about trusting in God, which fact has significant implications for any view of creationism or inerrancy. By all means read it.

HT: Higgaion.

Christian Carnival CXCVI

Yesterday's post on Divine Invisibility is included in this week's Christian Carnival. Thanks to Henry Neufeld for hosting!

Divine Invisibility

One of the more common objections to Christianity concerns God’s “invisibility.” Many atheists insist that if God existed, we should expect his presence to be undeniably obvious. For instance, if God is all-powerful and wants us to believe in him, why not provide a steady stream of miracles, that we might see and believe?

There are many problems with this argument. One is simply that miracles are always open to interpretation. No matter how improbable an event, its very improbability makes it open to doubt. The atheist can always insist that even the most far fetched natural explanation is “infinitely more probable” than a miracle. Jesus himself highlighted this, saying: “If they do not believe Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

For sake of argument, however, let's assume this is mistaken. Let’s assume that if only God provided enough miracles (say one every week for every person in the world) that would be enough to prove his existence. Is that really the kind of world in which these atheists would want to live?

Many atheists claim that, if God exists, they just want him to prove it to them. Perhaps this is true of some of them – genuinely open-minded people who would be glad to find evidence for God – but I don’t think this makes up the majority of atheists. No, for most atheists the absence of God is something to be glad of. With no God, we are free to choose our destiny as we see fit (unless we’re not free, of course), whereas if he did exist, we’d have to submit to his authority. The existence of God, to many atheists, would forever reduce us to the status of children, unable to care for ourselves.

I do not say this in a derogatory manner, nor am I assuming that all atheists think this way, but many do, and it is to these that this argument is directed. The problem is that these two objections work against one another. For what would it accomplish, really, if God were to provide us with a constant stream of miracles? It might convince us of his presence (or perhaps we would simply dismiss it as another, rather odd, law of nature), but it would certainly reduce us to infants.

If God were to bombard us with constant miracles, what would be left for us to do? What motivation would we have to study or grow, what need would we have to advance or learn? For instance, why would anyone become a doctor, if they knew that God would cure every illness within a week? Why would anyone avoid getting sick or injured at all? How could we learn to take care of ourselves in any way, if God did it for us? Indeed, if he ever failed to do so, would we not complain: “you perform miracles every day, can you not take care of this as well”?

Occasional miracles are one thing – they can give evidence of God’s power, even if only to those who look for them – but if God were to reveal himself as constantly and predictably as many atheists demand, he would in fact be denying us the very thing these same atheists treasure: our freedom to live and learn for ourselves.

Feed the Hungry and Improve Your Vocabulary

This is a great idea: Free Rice is a vocabulary game that donates its ad revenue to purchase rice through the United Nations. For every vocab question you answer correctly, ten grains of rice are donated. Since they launched on October 7, they have already donated over 300 million grains.

The game automatically adjusts its difficulty based on your answers, so you not only feed the hungry, but improve your vocabulary at the same time. Check it out!

HT: Higgaion

Knocked Up

Against our better judgment, my wife and I rented Knocked Up last night. She’s been wanting to see it for a while, mainly because it’s similar to one of her favorite movies (Fools Rush In) and she likes the lead actress. Unfortunately, this story of a couple of twenty-somethings who get pregnant on a one-night stand is even more crude than we feared. It’s absolutely filled with explicit language, drug use and nudity, nearly all of which is crass and unnecessary to the plot. I would in no way recommend the film, nor do I have any desire to see it again. In all honesty, we should have just turned it off; it was that bad.

But we didn’t, and in the end, Knocked Up worked surprisingly well as social commentary. Its intended audience is the perpetually adolescent guy who looks for “Unrated” versions and would like nothing better than to spend his days smoking pot with his buddies. Yet that is precisely the kind of lifestyle the film criticizes. The lead character (Ben Stone, played by Seth Rogen) is essentially a 23-year old frat boy (minus the college education), living with four guys who spend all their time smoking and goofing off. None of them have real jobs (who knows how they afford rent, let alone weed) and their only ambition is to create a website detailing their favorite stars' nude scenes. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that their real dream would be to actually sleep with those celebrities, but the website is their only achievable ambition.

If this is the type of guy the movie is meant to attract, however, it quickly becomes apparent just how empty such a life really is. Ben is a slob, living in a pig-sty with four friends who barely even like each other. Running out of money and wasting the best years of his life, he's going nowhere and he doesn’t even realize it. When he finally meets the girl of his dreams (Alison Scott, played by Katherine Heigl), he gets so drunk he hardly remembers sleeping with her, and doesn’t realize how much he disgusts her until it’s too late. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, it’s certain she would never have gone out with him again (she only met him at all because she herself got too drunk while out celebrating a promotion).

And so the movie goes, until it finally allows Ben to hit rock bottom: nearly broke, his life is so meaningless that when an earthquake hits, the only thing he cares to save is his bong (he forgets that his pregnant girlfriend is sleeping in the next room). He doesn’t know what he’s missing until he and Alison’s brother-in-law spend a drugged-out weekend in Vegas. Sitting alone in their hotel room, they suddenly realize what a mess they’ve made of their lives. They have these smart, beautiful women who (completely improbably) love them, and yet they spend most of their time trying to get away from them.

By the time it’s over, Knocked Up is really about these two guys growing up and taking responsibility for their lives, which is a remarkably wholesome message from a movie that is anything but wholesome. I would not recommend this film to anyone (I rather wish I hadn’t watched it myself), but maybe, just maybe, it is the kind of thing that might wake up a few of the overgrown teenagers to whom it’s been marketed. For if there is anything more distressing than the characters in this movie, it’s the fact that there really are guys who live like Ben, and don't see what's wrong with it. This film is for them, and I hope it finds its mark.

Traffic and the Fall

After spending nearly five hours stuck in traffic today, this seems like a good time to highlight another of my favorite posts from Signs of the Times, Traffic and the Fall:

I once saw a cartoon about a perfect gentleman who became a maniac whenever driving. In everyday life, he’s relaxed and courteous – he even helps a spider off the walkway. But when he gets behind the wheel, his shoulders rise up, he leans forward with a grimace, his whole demeanor changes. Foot jammed to the floor, he races past unsuspecting grannies and runs other drivers off the road.

It was a ridiculous cartoon, but I have a confession to make (I’m not even Catholic!): After six months of commuting, I’ve realized that I am that man. I’m normally pretty easy going, but driving stresses me out to the extreme. I yell and swear. I rage when people fail to go at least five over. Don’t they know that speed limits are the minimum acceptable speed?! And if someone can’t drive in the snow, I feel an unbearable urge to bumper tap them into a ditch. Stoplights are the very beacons of hell.

Some picture heaven as clouds and harps; I imagine Bruce Almighty turning his car into a Ferrari and parting traffic like the Red Sea. If I pray while driving, it’s Please, God, give me a green light and an open road! After all, if he really is all-powerful and all-good, surely he could and would accomplish this minor feat. Yet he never seems to answer that prayer – maybe the atheists were right all along.

Or maybe something else is going on here. My relationship with traffic seems but a microcosm of my relationship with society in general. My inhibitions may disappear when no one can see me but those I leave in the dust, but the desires that surface were there all along. At my worst, I drive as though every road belongs to me. Deep down, I suspect I’d prefer to treat the whole world that way; it’s just not so easy most other places.

Never-mind that freeways wouldn’t exist at all, if not for the traffic that justifies their expense. Never-mind that society itself depends on the millions of others I’d love to push aside. Never-mind that everything I have is a gift. When driving I forget all that and my true self comes out. I don’t care that my red light allows you to safely cross the intersection – it costs me fifteen seconds, and that’s plenty of time to mutter something dreadful about your mother. I may be more civil elsewhere, but my attitude behind the wheel proves what I really am – a deeply selfish, sinful man.

And that’s just it. Perhaps the reason God steadfastly refuses to answer my traffic prayers, is because it’s not my commute that really needs fixing. It’s me. Selfish as I am, it’s easy to feel that if God were good, life would be smooth. But is it not rather those rough parts of life that force me to face what’s really wrong within me? What I need most is not that all others would make way for me, but that I might learn to make way for them, even in the privacy of my own car.

If God rarely answers my prayers for a swift commute, there are others he always answers. Pray for patience and the response is immediate – usually he puts some yokel in my path and asks how I’ll respond.

If you liked this post, be sure and read Kate Bluett's excellent response: Masks.

Even Good Vampires are Bad?

An interesting discussion has sprung up over at Boundless Line, considering whether traditionally evil characters - vampires, dragons, witches and wizards - can be legitimately portrayed as heroes, or whether this inevitably blurs the line between good and evil. As you might expect, I tend to think they can, if redeemed (for aren't we ourselves "good monsters"?), but the whole discussion is interesting, and Ethan Cordray in particular makes some important points for the opposite view:

The trouble with this is that even modern vampires are defined by an essentially evil quality: the need to consume the blood of others to sustain an artificial immortality. That is what makes them vampires, and that is what links them to the old folklore figures. No matter what their personalities or appearances might be, vampires still drink blood and live forever. That's what makes them vampires.

To imagine a "good vampire," then, is really an impossibility. Vampirism is essentially evil, and one who engages in it is thus a doer of evil. If being a vampire is the essence of a character -- that is, if it's what defines the character's personality and behavior -- then that character is essentially evil, and I think we can rightly demand that it be portrayed as such.

On the other hand, I think it's possible to portray a vampiric character that contains goodness, or even one that is morally transformed within a story. This would require, however, that the "redeemed vampire" character give up vampirism, just as we would expect a redeemed criminal to give up crime.

HT: Evangelical Outpost

Hope and Sacrifice in A Tale of Two Cities

Not long ago, I mentioned that my favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption. It truly is an inspiring story of hope and sacrifice, a Christian story in the deepest sense of the term. There is another story, however, that strikes me deeper. This evening I made my daughter stay up an hour past bed time so I could finish reading it to her, though I cried so hard I barely got through it.

I’m speaking of my favorite book, and no, it’s not Harry Potter. It’s A Tale of Two Cities, which is one of the most difficult and beautiful books I’ve ever read, and the most poignant depiction of the gospel lived-out that I’ve ever encountered. I’m not a fan of most of Charles Dickens' books – A Christmas Carol makes me gag – but this story is breathtaking.

Admittedly, it’s a tough book to read, and not just because it’s dark. Its language is so dense and carefully-phrased, it has to be read aloud for full effect. Through its first half, it presents several dozen seemingly unconnected events and characters, without explaining their importance. It takes a real act of faith to stick with the story, yet steadily its complex plot resolves itself into a true masterpiece in which there is nothing extraneous at all. Absolutely every detail of this story, from the first page on, is eventually tied into its stirring climax. Every minor occurrence becomes important before the end; every character plays their vital role in its completion.

Summarizing the plot would be difficult and give too much away, but in brief, A Tale of Two Cities, like Shawshank (and Les Misérables, my next favorite book), is a story of unjust imprisonment, and thus a symbol for our own universal bondage to sin. Like the characters in this tale, all of us are born into a system overrun with evil, and while we each must choose either to accept or to redeem what small realm of it we touch, we lack the power to truly escape it on our own.

It is called A Tale of Two Cities, and though this undoubtedly refers to London and Paris, whose distinctive histories shape its every contour, it is also the story of two other “cities,” what Saint Augustine called “the city of man” and “the city of God.” Set before and during the French Revolution – that bloody and lawless coup in a long line of such tragedies – it is first off a tale of the "city of man," as one nation's unbearable suffering symbolizes the misery of all those oppressed by the cruel and indifferent of the world. Worse still, in its depiction of the equally cruel and indifferent revenge that so often repays such oppression (and certainly did in revolutionary France), we see also the unending cycle of evil that so defaces all our attempts to save ourselves.

Yet this is not only a tale of “the worst of times,” it is also a tale of the best of them. Like Shawshank, this is a story that centers on a hope that can only be gained through sacrifice. Even better than Shawshank, it is a story which recognizes that sacrifice can only be authentic if embraced out of love. True, unconditional, world-conquering love, that is the heart of this story, and the final answer it gives to evil. This is not the sappy-sentimental, overly-sexualized love of a modern romance. No. This is a love that takes its inspiration from the one whose own sacrifice marked the turning point in history, whose own love founded "the city of God." In the end, A Tale of Two Cities is a story of his sacrificial love, lived out through redeemed men and women, which is the only hope we have in this dark world. As such, it is his words that one seemingly minor but ultimately central character recalls at the book’s climax, and it is these words that we too must recall if we are to have any hope at all:

“I am the Resurrection and the Life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

The Paradoxes of Christianity

Christian doctrine is a complicated thing. Though the gospel can be easily summarized – “For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 – teasing out just what it means for God to send his “one and only son” to save his “children” (!), leads to more paradoxes than your average time travel movie.

For instance, Jesus of Nazareth was (and is) both fully divine and fully human. Not half of one and half the other, but completely divine, eternal, only-begotten of God, etc. and completely human, temporal, begotten of a woman, etc. Yet how can Jesus be both eternal and temporal? How can the creator of everything become a creature? How can this be anything other than blatant contradiction?

Nor do the difficulties end with the nature of Christ. The Bible is also claimed to be fully human and fully divine. Salvation is by humanity’s free choice and God’s predetermined election. God is both the source of all that exists (including evil), and yet innocent of all evil. At every turn, Christian doctrine maintains, even proudly declares, such paradoxes.

What are we to make of all this. As Christians, have we grown so accustomed to these difficulties that we no longer recognize them as such? If the first rule of logic is non-contradiction, is our faith merely a colossal confusion? Perhaps, but there is another explanation. To see this, an analogy will be helpful, for Christian doctrine is not the only area of knowledge that includes such paradoxes.

Consider quantum mechanics: According to this branch of physics, at the microscopic level the universe is an extremely strange and paradoxical place. The fundamental particles of our universe – photons, electrons, quarks, etc. – boast a number of properties that certainly appear to be contradictory. For instance, according to Wave-Particle Duality, these fundamental particles act both as though they have a particular position and trajectory and as though their “probability wave” extends throughout the entire universe. According to Quantum entanglement and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, particles can influence each other instantly over infinite distances, and yet we can never know simultaneously where they are and how fast they are moving.

Of course, just because there are also paradoxes in physics doesn’t automatically excuse Christian doctrine for having its own. What is significant, however, is the remarkably similar form of these paradoxes.

First, in both quantum mechanics and Christianity, these paradoxes almost certainly result from our own finite perspectives. As human beings accustomed to dealing with objects measured in inches and feet (or centimeters and meters for my non-American friends), it’s hardly surprising that our language gets stretched to the breaking point when we begin talking about things – like quantum particles and the divine nature – far removed from such everyday experience. Presumably, these paradoxes are capable of resolution; we just don’t (yet?) have access to a broad enough perspective to resolve them. Our usual intuitions – that objects can only be in one place at a time, or that freedom and determinism are opposites – can lead us astray when facing such ultimate questions.

Second, in both quantum mechanics and Christianity, these paradoxes are confirmed by constant experience. Though Wave-Particle Duality could be dissolved by rejecting the experimental data that shows light particles acting like waves (e.g. the counter-intuitive Double-Slit Experiment), that wouldn’t solve the problem, it would only ignore it. Likewise, the Freedom-Predestination paradox could be dissolved by rejecting human freedom (as hyper-Calvinists do), but such does not solve the problem, it only ignores it. For just as Wave-Particle Duality is repeatedly confirmed by experiment, the Freedom-Predestination paradox is confirmed by our constant experience of both the reality of freedom and the still small voice of election.

Finally, in both quantum mechanics and Christianity, these paradoxes are central to the system of thought. The paradox of Wave-Particle Duality is not a peripheral detail of quantum mechanics, an exception that can be dismissed as a misunderstanding. It is rather the essential feature of the theory, the central fact by which everything else in quantum mechanics makes sense. In the same way, the dual nature of Christ – both fully God and fully man – is not some peripheral detail; it is the central fact of Christian doctrine. In both cases, the proof of the theory is not that it makes sense, but that it makes sense of everything else.

Mark Shea on Harry Potter

If my previous post was maddeningly vague on why I think Harry Potter is a deeply Christian tale, let me correct that by heartily recommending Mark Shea's piece over at First Things: "Harry Potter and the Christian Critics" (need I say Spoiler Warning?). He succinctly demolishes each of the major "Christian" objections to the series, and is well worth a read.