The Burden of Existence

To him it was all just a game. The fact that he was deaf did not deter him from approaching this disability, the resulting lack of communication, and the inevitable crushing loneliness, with a bit of prudish obstinacy. He was a proud man – have been for all his life – and so it was hard, nearly impossible, for him to admit that he had a problem, or to even hint of his weakness. The way he acted, the way he carried on, every gesture and posture, was perfectly enacted in a way to suggest that he cared only to play along in this game, this play. The only thing he could not control was the drops of dried tears that formed at the edge of his eyes.

His life was either supremely admirable or utterly foolish. His dignity was either the only thing he had left, or the only thing keeping him from love. Existence was either a burden that he must begrudgingly accept, or a gift and a shadow of something much more real that was to come.

I could not shout loud enough for him to hear me.

Week 6 – Beatitudes

In general, each of the beatitudes follow this format:

Blessed are —- for —–

What is interesting to note is that these beatitudes are actually in passive voice. (I wish I knew more grammar to describe what I’m saying accurately) Anytime a sentence is in passive voice, we can infer that there is another object or person that is doing the action, that is a ‘demoted direct object’, that can be reinserted at the end using the preposition of ‘by’. For example: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted, ‘by God’.

Even the beatitudes that don’t seem to work using this preposition, we see that the active object is God. God is the one who gives the kingdom of heaven to the poor in spirit, and so on.

So using this passive voice (disclaimer: okay, so i don’t know biblical greek… but from what i’m told, the grammatical structure of beatitudes in particular are pretty accurate in the English translations), the attentive audience may very well wonder why God is missing in these beatitudes, one of the most influential sermons by Jesus, and in fact the whole world. After all, in the old testament, when Yahweh gave the Jewish people the law or when He sent them the prophets, he repeatedly emphasized that the whole reason for these laws was Himself. ‘Be holy for I am holy.’ So why does Jesus, who is laying out what appears to be another set of rules for moral conduct, leave God out?

The answer is that God was there: Jesus was standing right there besides them, in front of their eyes. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs in the kingdom of heaven, whose King was standing in front of them. This immediacy meant that the Beatitudes were not just another set of rules anymore; for all the rules that came before, and indeed the ones that were to come afterward, predicated on the God who commanded from afar, passing cold judgment unsympathetically. But these rules were given by a God who was right there, both sympathetic to our weaknesses, and able to strength us. These rules were not just rules anymore but a description of a life being transformed by grace. These rules were not a system of rewards and punishment but a promise that He who started the work will finish it. These rules were the proclamation of a new kingdom whose king is willing to die for its lowly subjects. And that is why it is all the more beautiful; that is why they are called the beatitudes – not because of the blessings, but because of the beauty of the One who blesses.

Edit: You know what? i lied. i don’t think i heard this from that revival or a former pastor. i wonder where i got it from. hmm…

Week 5 – Save yourself

As Jesus was dying on the cross, some who passed by said to him, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” (NIV)

Think about the reason these people were saying that. They were likely Jewish, and very proud of their religion and culture, and the temple epitomized all of this. It was a pretty impressive structure, from its enormous scale, to the shining gold-like surface. So when Jesus claimed that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it, you could imagine why some Jewish people would take exception to that. They were offended that this magnificent building that took years to build, that symbolized their national identity, was being treated so seemingly flippantly by this young rabbi. So if Jesus could accomplish this Herculean task of destroying and rebuilding the temple, then coming down from a cross would be a piece of cake, right?

Furthermore, they were also offended to Jesus’ claim to being the Son of God, thus equating himself with God. The Jewish religion clung on to monotheism stubbornly for centuries, though they were surrounded in the desert of polytheism. (praise God that they did!) Jesus’ claim unnerved their monotheistic traditions, for they could very well make the connection that in claiming to be the Son of God, Jesus was claiming to be God himself. If Jesus was indeed Yaweh, they reasoned, then it’d be a simple, easy task for Him to step down from the cross.

But Jesus didn’t. He accomplished the entire work on the cross, for the saving of souls, for the glory of the Father. Only when the entire work was finished, did He give up His spirit. I had the opportunity to give blood for the first time in my life last week. I guess I was afraid that I would faint or something. But as I sat there with this little needle in my vein, blood flowing out of me, I could not help but to wonder how much love my Lord had in suffering upon the cross. Any time during the process of giving blood, he could have quit. And yet, at every instance of that excruciating physical pain, and hellish spiritual abandonment, he endured it.

When we look back at the passage at the beginning, we find a strange pattern. They had it all wrong: they had everything backwards. “Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” Yet it was precisely because He was the Son of God, that He did not come down from the cross. “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!” They thought Jesus was referring to the temple that was built in Jerusalem, when Jesus was actually referring to Himself. They were witnessing Jesus destroying the temple, yet they were too blind to see it.

The temple they were referring to, the temple in Jerusalem, was destroyed years later during the rebellion. Likewise, every temple we build will eventually be destroyed. Along with these temples, all of man’s efforts to climb up to God are destroyed. All our religiosity, outward conformity, or even sincere desires to keep the law, crumble away. We will fail in keeping the law on the outside. If we succeed, we will turn to ourselves and end up patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. If we avoid this temptation, we will congratulate ourselves for being humble for not patting ourselves on the back. And so on. As soon as turn our eyes inwards for the answer, we miss it. We can not be saved from ourselves, let alone these endless attempts of self-righteousness and self-forgetfulness. We can only forget ourselves if we think about something so big that it leaves no room for us. “We have forgotten Being.”

We who were unable to save ourselves, can only be saved by the One who was unwilling to save himself.

Week 4 – More Thoughts on Free Will (vs. Total Depravity)

A pastor at our church defined Free Will as “ability to choose something apart from God.” This can in turn be interpreted in couple different ways.

1) Humans choose that which God does not choose. Or human will supersedes God’s choice.

or

2) Humans choose that which God does not desire. Or human will supersedes God’s desire.

If we adhere to the first definition, then Free Will cannot exist, either Biblically or philosophically. If God’s will is frustrated by, or even yields to, human will, then he would cease to be God, because He would not be omnipotent.

The second definition seems to limit God’s power as well. If He can’t choose what He desires, then He is, again, not omnipotent. Otherwise, if God chooses what he does not desire, then He is powerless over His own desires and emotions. However, even in our own hearts, we find different levels of desires. We want chocolate all the time, but also desire to not have this big sagging belly (sad face D: ). So we refrain (well some of us refrain) from eating chocolate everyday. God’s desires are multileveled as well. God, first and foremost, desires His own glory. And secondly, on a lower level, He desires an entirely moral, good universe. It would make sense why God would desire this in terms of permanence. God is eternal, but the material world is not. What is more permanent in its nature is more important than that which is ephemeral. I think, however, a better term for God’s first level desire would be ‘character’. It is God’s character to be gracious. Then the definition can again be altered.

3) Humans choose that which goes against God’s character.

Notice that if we use the term ‘character’, then there is no need for the ’supersede’ part of the definition. But this sounds strangely like the definition of sin. Does sin exist? Yes. That means Free Will, by this definition, exists, and it is sin. What is “Free Will” exactly free from? Are we Free from God’s ultimate choice, or are we choosing that which goes against who He is?

Another way to approach Free Will is through the idea of moral responsibility. Romans 9 seems to teach that God shows mercy and hardens people according to His own desire. But doesn’t this seem unfair? Why does God still hold us responsible? (v.19) The response from scripture is who are we to ask such question! At first, this response seem like an ad hominem. But it really isn’t, because it’s a valid point. God created us, and He has the right to do what He wants. And in subsequent verses, Paul makes it clear that God does this for His own glory. It is His every right to do so.

But the objection seems to still stand, and our sense of justice may still be unsatisfied. (Ignoring for a moment that justice itself is part of God’s character…) Why does God send people to hell when God himself hardened their hearts? In order to answer this question, we examine another question. When are we morally responsible for our choices? When we act upon them? No, for the bible shows that God values our hearts more than our actions. The sinful desires that we harbor in our hearts are just as much a sin as the acts we commit. But if God hardens our hearts, then are not these sinful desires a direct result of God’s will?

The one who causes a crime is morally responsible for the consequences of the action, but the one who is an accomplice or an instrument of that act is also responsible. The hit-man who carries out the orders of a mob boss is guilty of murder, regardless of whether or not he was ordered to do it. We are not off the hook – we are still guilty. However, God is not responsible, even though He caused our hearts to harden, for He has every right to do what He wants with His own property.

—

As with Free Will, the other four parts of Arminianism seem to neglect the fact that God is outside the realm of time. If He created the physical realm, then He created time itself, which means He is totally outside of it. If this is taken into account, then most of the five points of Calvinism makes sense. Limited Atonement makes sense. So does Perseverance of Saints. And from what I understand about TULIP, they follow like dominoes logically. But this notion that God is outside of time, isn’t found anywhere in the Bible (well, isn’t found in this exact form), so I can see why someone would reject it.

Defining Free Will

My thoughts on Free Will have changed quite a lot last few years. I actually don’t know 100% what exactly I currently believe in. Part of the motivation I guess for me to write on this blog is to hammer our my thoughts and beliefs and reason it out. I do know that there are probably at least a couple hundred ways people have defined it, some from purely philosophical, and others from theological perspectives. Unfortunately, I would not be able to enumerate the nuances between all of these definitions. What I hope to do is to think upon the biblical understanding of free will and to come to a conclusive definition by the time I finish writing these thoughts.

First, what are the motivations for defining Free Will? One motivation is to elevate the human choice. But this is rather flawed in that it places unreasonable and unnecessary emphasis on free will. It takes as its premise our subjective experience and general revelation, rather than objective truth and special revelation. While there are knowledge to be gleaned from purely philosophical examination of human choice, it cannot claim the depths of revelatory explanations.

Another motivation for defining Free Will, is to account for the existence of evil. This is one of the classic arguments against the existence of God. I’m pretty sure that this argument dates back before Christianity (Epicurus maybe?). The argument can be stated in many different ways, but can be summarized like this. 1) God is good, or omni-benevolent. 2) God is all-powerful, or omni-potent. 3) If God is both all-good and all-powerful, there would be no evil in this world. 4) But there is evil in this world. 5) Therefore God is either not good or not powerful, in which case he would cease to be God.

One powerful way to refute this argument is by Free Will. Everything God created is good. The existence of free agents to possess free will is good. But the definition of a free agent is that it can choose that which is evil rather than good. Therefore, God is still good, and he is still all powerful since he created the free agents in the first place, but is not responsible for evil. The intention of preserving this notion of free will isn’t to ‘protect’ God from doing evil, as some claim, but rather to harmonize these two orthodox claims that God is good and that there is evil in this world.

One criticism of this refutation of the atheistic argument, is that it equates being creator of the initial conditions and the rules, as being all-powerful. But does not the definition of all-powerful mean that it is in powerful at every moment? Suppose I write a simulation program, in which I can only specify the governing rules and the initial conditions. Am I really in total control of that entire simulation? Maybe if I had knowledge of most minute consequence of the initial conditions, and if I could somehow change the initial conditions and the rules in a way to change one small detail in one specific corner in one instance of time of the simulation without changing what I desired for all other parts of the simulation, then yes. In other words, if I had omniscience over the entirety of the simulation, and had with intention, willfully set up the initial conditions and the rules so that the outcome would be exactly as I have foreseen it, then yes, I still have omnipotence. However, there is one serious flaw to this compatiblistic definition of free will: it fails to account the fact that it places God under the law of time, and hence limits His omnipotence.

One way I’ve tried to think about this is through the relativistic experience of time. But first, some geometrical nonsense. Have you noticed that when you take a reflection of a 2D shape to a line, then take another reflection of the resulting shape to another line, it is like a rotation about the point at which the lines intersect? But when the lines are parallel (or when this point of intersection is infinitely far away), then you get a translation and not rotation! Or another way to look at it would be translation is a funky type of rotation. The reason I bring up such a mundane observation is that any time an infinite quantity is involved, our definitions of things break down. Now, keep this in mind as we think about our experience of time. The faster you go, the slower time passes by. So if you had an identical twin who traveled around the galaxy at light speed and came back to earth meet you, he will be much younger than you. (head explodes). So if God is Spirit, and is omni-present, that is analogous to Him being infinitely fast and traveling everywhere. (Which would also explain why He does not change. )

Now a choice, as I understand it, is in context of time. When I make a choice, there was a point in time when I was undecided and a point in time later on when my mind was made up. Now suppose I’m on a spaceship while making this choice. From a stationary observer on earth, it would seem as though it took me longer to make that same choice, while in fact, from my experience it took the same amount of time. As the speed of this imaginary spaceship increases, the observed time difference (to the stationary observer) will progressively increase as well. When the velocity of the spaceship is infinite, and the spaceship is everywhere at all time, then the mind of the sentient being on-board does not change at all to our observation.

I’m single myself (ladies~), but when I hear most people talk about romantic relationships, they recollect it with a sense of fate and destiny. “I was destined to be with you!” they say to each other. And yet, every kind of romantic advice I get tells me that I should proactively make a choice! I think this is kinda like what’s happening in the spacecraft! When we’re in the spacecraft, looking for a home planet to land on, the choice seems very real. But to the lover waiting on the surface, there is but the fate of the first encounter. Okay I must be getting tired.

One definition of Free Will that I do not agree with is “the ability to make choose between meaningfully differentiable options”. Then, humans have no choice at all. The reason I dislike this this definition is that Jesus doesn’t seem to talk about Free Will this way. The only thing that is necessary for the definition of Free Will is moral reprehensibility. And that does not necessarily preclude the ability to act upon that choice. Jesus seems to consider the heart and motivation more important than the act. But if ability is not part of free will, then only ‘will’ is left. But even if this is true, is God sovereign over the our will itself? (head explodes again)

I give up.

Week 3 – who is my neighbor?

I don’t really know who lives next door. I met her only once. When i was changing tires in the driveway last week, the lady pulled up and we exchanged brief pleasantries. But that was the whole extent of my interaction with my immediate neighbor with whom I have lived the past 2 years or so.

I have not traveled on the way to Jericho, nor have seen anyone lying in the ditch, beaten, robbed, and naked. Dr. Martin Luther King, in one of his sermons in ‘Strength to Love’ talks about his experience visiting that very place, how it is a dangerous road even today because of its steep descent. Robbers would hide behind the many bends in the roads to prey upon unsuspecting travelers. Have I chosen to travel such dangerous roads? Or have I consciously chosen to avoid these type of situations, to take the long way round, even to the same destination?

A few months ago I was thinking about buying a condo. I of course looked for places near work and church. But I hesitated looking at places that were in the more “ghetto” places. Even picking the current apartment, one of the biggest factors I looked at was the crime rate of the city. Have I avoided the dangerous road? Does the gospel centered life demand that we live in socioeconomically inferior areas, where we wouldn’t want to send our kids to school, or fear being robbed?

On the whole, this questions of who my neighbor is easier to answer if I realize where my destination is. Then the answer is simple: my neighbor is whoever I see that is in need. But this whole helping the neighbor itself isn’t the destination. The Samaritan wasn’t going around dangerous roads looking for people in the ditch. He had a place he had to get to.

So for me, I need to figure out this destination. I think I know what it is (for now anyway). And if I see anyone along the way that needs my help, I must help them. Love everyone that I see, including that lady who lives next door. As for buying that condo – well I won’t be traveling that road any time soon

Response to Lesson 2: General and Special Revelation

So I was listening to Dr. William Lane Craig the other day about the impossibility of the actual infinite number of things, and how if this were possible then one would end up with nonsensical situations like Hilbert’s hotel. He was discussing it in regards to the cosmological argument for God’s existence, but I think this mathematical (or is it philosophical?) concept applies rather nicely to the theological idea of ‘revelation’. That is, one cannot go from the finite to the infinite. It can only be the other way around. Or as CS Lewis puts it in Miracles, Nature has no defense against the supernatural. If it chooses to invade, nothing about the nature of Nature is able to stop it. Revelations specifically and Miracles in general may be singularly improbable only in regards to Nature, but altogether possible in regards to the Super-Natural. This mathematical idea also illustrates the futility of religion – of how there is just no way for Man to reach infinity. The blind and futile hopes of the humanists and the false sense of optimism of social evolutionists are negligent of this very fact that there are no actual infinities.

General Revelation seems, from what I’ve encountered and read about, very much rational. Granted, the ontological proof is hard to put your mind around. But I have yet to see a good objection to it other than that it’s hard to think about. Kant’s whole ‘existence is not a predicate’ seems weak. Even the advance of science demonstrates in even greater degrees than ever before the cosmological and teleological proof for God. According to one biographer, there was a reason Albert Einstein was a theist. He looked at the innumerable number of stars and galaxies and saw the grand work of a Creator. Yet when he looked at the organized religion which lacked the admiration and awe that should be part of addressing this vast and infinite Creator, he could not help but to think that they were blaspheming. (From ‘Let the Nations Be Glad’) So General Revelation, the whole of nature, tells us something about God.

Yet this isn’t enough. We can only know about God the Creator in this vague sort of way. Some ancient religions describe this benevolent father-like god who is slowly forgotten by humanity. General Revelation can only tell us some attributes of this God, but not know Him in any deeper way. The stars do not form the letters of His name, for even those ancient of spirits dare not utter them. There is a need then for special revelation.

Here’s actually what I wanted to write about. Inspired vs. Revelatory scripture. I realize now what ‘inspired’ means, that it is God-breathed. But I still can’t let go of the picture of the writers actually being inspired in the other sense as well. I really do hope that they were passionate and zealous and infused with creative enthusiasm. I have a hard time imagining human beings writing down anything God-breathed in any other way. I also think these two categories might not be mutually exclusive. All of scripture, even the historical recordings, in some ways are revelatory. Maybe not directly, but perhaps indirectly, by the fact that they are there are at all.

I realize that I have not done a fun post on this blog in quite a while. I have to write this response every week, so that may be the case for the foreseeable future, unless I get ‘inspired’. harhar.

Selfish God

“Selfishness” is a trait that we look down upon. It is probably a vice, and certainly not a virtue. There are other noble qualities that are inherently incompatible with selfishness – charity, courage, and above all, humility. We as humans however are more familiar with selfishness than these other lofty qualities. One of the first words that a child utters is ‘cookie’, and very soon after that, ‘Mine!’ We are led to associate selfishness as infantile, and consider it as stemming from ignorance.

It seems like outright heresy, then, to attribute God as being selfish.

But let us examine the evidence. Countless times in scripture, God declares “for MY own glory”, or “for my sake”. (First chapter of “Let the Nations be Glad” by John Piper has a pretty good list of verses that demonstrates this.) It seems that everything that Yahweh does is for His own glory! Isn’t that a tad bit selfish? There are other ways to demonstrate that God is selfish. First, does God love you? Yes. Second, does God love Himself? Yes. Then which one does He love more, you or Himself? Himself. In fact, is there anything else that God loves more than Himself? No, there isn’t. Therefore, God is selfish.

But how can Christians take this concept of God’s selfishness and jealousy for His own glory, with the picture of the humble King who would suffer at the hand of sinners? We are told by evangelical pastors that God loves us, and that He died because he loves us. But if God is indeed selfish, He loves us, yes, but He died primary because He loved himself! How can God be both selfish and Love?

The answer lies, I think, in Trinity. This is one paradoxical doctrine of Christianity that unites these two disparate characteristics, that other monotheistic religions lack and therefore unable to harmonize. God in three persons. That is why Him being selfish is also Him being loving; there isn’t a distinction between these two characteristics. Glimpses of this can be seen in our own experience. When a loved one dies, our souls are in anguish, not only because we will not see the loved one, but also because we feel as though a part of ourselves has died as well. Is this being selfish? By the strictest of definitions, yes, but we would not fault this type of selfishness that is fueled only by love. At the deepest level of love, the lines of identity are blurred. Even on earth we say to our lovers “Love you? I am you!” In heaven, in trinity, this is literally true.

I love what Anne Rice writes in her historical fiction of Christ. As Jesus begins His ministry, he quotes Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” He has healed the wounded (Peter’s mother), called the outcasts of the society (tax collectors), and refreshed the hearts of men (water into wine). And after all this, Jesus declares in a loving, caring way this thunderous truth – that God is One. There is this jealousy for God’s glory, that is inseparable from the very nature of His love. This also demonstrates that it is actually beneficial for us that God is all-consumed for His love. We are healed, and reunited, and satisfied only because God is selfish for His own glory. We are healed by the very wounds that Christ endured for His namesake. We are reunited to God only by the Father turning His face away from the Son, for His own glory. We rejoice because Christ has endured the cross for the joy set before Him.

JR Smith, is a talented shooting guard for my DENVER NUGGETS, who has made some bad mistakes off-court. Things took a tragic turn when he failed to stop at a stop sign and the accident resulted in the death of his best friend Andre Bell who was riding with him in the car. This last month, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Yeah, seems kinda light doesn’t it? I mean, his mistake cost a person’s life. But what’s even more amazing was the reaction of Wanda Bell (Andre Bell’s mother) during the court hearing. “Wanda Bell wandered over to Smith at the court hearing, giving him a hug and telling him that she loved him. She can’t hold a grudge, not against someone who meant so much to her son.” This man’s mistake cost the life of her son, and yet she tells him that she loves him. This I think is sort of how the cross works. I for one am glad that God the Father selfishly loves God the Son, for this means life for me.

Flesh. Spirit. War.

The entire universe groans in silent tremblings
within, in my joints and muscles, and each sinews.
Each belabored breath is its crying out in shame,
in pain, in great anticipation, of unquenchable
desperate longing for Sabbath, for relief from
the inevitable decay that greedily awaits
even the mightiest of stars.

These soot-covered mirrors that surround
only reveal my own reflection, with unending,
accusing gaze, with a hint of untraceable, menacing
grin.  Even they silently mock behind my back.
This is not ‘other people’, but rather only you
with yourself, and nothing but yourself, so that
others lose all their identity and you yours.

Why do I do the things I do not want to do?
The war wages on, the same conflict that has
shaken the heavens and the earth, the One
who has flung the stars into the sea, the One
who has violently spoke the world into being -
He is commanding war within.
The entire universe groan, inside. Same war,
same battle.  The only way to survive
is to crucify your very life.

Your Body

Your Body is Beautiful,
folds upon folds of layered skin,
with scars, burn marks, cuts, and bruises.
With each harsh word and awkward stares
adding unto the manifest glory
that will be Yours when all these pass
into the light.

We are beautiful.
For if we are one,
if we are of the same body,
if we were meant for all ages to be one creature,
then nothing temporal can change
the eternal reality of us.

Therefore,
I delight in the trials,
I rejoice in the nails, the whips,
the accusations, the shipwrecks,
the stones,
for all will be rolled away,
and yet be part of that day.

The pain we feel now is part of that
joy, of that love, that is to come.