Stone Life

Last night was something out of the ordinary and great in the midst of this semester…pure fun. This has been homecoming week, and part of the festivities is the annual Powder Puff Football Game (or “gameS”, as the case may be). I got the opportunity to coach the 9th and 10th grade girls against the 11th and 12th grades, coached by the school board president. I practiced with my team several times this week, and we clearly outmatched the others in speed and throwing accuracy. Thanks to the brilliant coaching schemes (or flat-out athletic-superiority of a bunch of 15 yr-olds) we won 21-14.

The true highlight of the evening came next. After weeks of trash talking and grandstanding, the faculty took on the parents in a flag football game. There were about 20-30 parents roaming their sideline compared with our 8-10, but there was something else strikingly different about the two teams. How should I put this? Let’s say that the majority of their sideline was packing a few extra pounds around the midsection, and their median age was just shy of my parents’. We, on the other hand, had 3 20-somethings, two of which have just recently graduated from college after playing NCAA baseball, and myself who exercises religiously. After that, we had our athletic director who can throw the long ball to us streaking down the sidelines, and then we had a smattering of other people, some athletic, others not. It was clearly, clearly a mismatch.

I was expecting a beat-down of the parents at the hands of the faculty, but what I did not expect was the seriousness and competitive spirit of the parents. Let us just say that it was good that the stands are pretty far from the field, because it got nasty out there. Tempers flared, hits began to be leveled, arguments over calls abounded, but we only egged it on. What seemed particularly disturbing to them, and perhaps in poor taste on our part, was the barrage of Chad Johnson-like touchdown celebrations that we engaged in on most all of our 7 or so end zone trips. We thought they were genius, but it really, really hacked them off. We told them to keep us out of the end zone and it would not be a problem, but they didn’t seem to follow our advice.

We were pitching a shutout when I was flagged for tackling the quarterback too hard in the second half. In fairness, I had just been blindsided in the side of my head by a parent as I ran for a pass, so I was holding back anymore. I did not think I hit Coach Frazier very hard, but he is 50 and I’m 25, so the refs did not have much pity for me arguing my case. They scored on the next play; their ONLY score.

It was fun. This morning, in celebration of my Powder Puff girls victory, I bought doughnuts and we are taking 1st period off and hanging out. For at least 1 day I am not the meanest, worst, most boring teacher at St. Alban’s….actually my time as “cool” is running short, because we start reading Plato together next period. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Proof that I have led my wife down a dark and dangerous path; she sent me a great quote she read that goes along with what she and I (and you) have been discussing of late.

“The true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

I also, in the course of my reading of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, came across some fun dialogue between Isabel and her aunt.

” Now what’s your point of view? she asked of her aunt. When you criticize evertying here you should have a point of view. Yours doesn’t seem to be American – you thought everything over there so disagreeable. When I criticize I have mine; it’s thoroughly American!”

“My dear young lady,” said Mrs. Touchett, “there are as many points of view in the world as there are people of sense to take them. You may say that doesn’t make them very numerous! American? Never in the world; that’s shockingly narrow. My point of view, thank God, is personal!

For my 11/12 Grade English class we have begun reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I may have mentioned this before, but I really enjoy Fitzgerald. This book in particular is great, because it is written in such an over-the-top manner, as if each line is poetry. He looked back on this early novel late in his career with a slight sense of embarassment on account of this poetic-form, but I think that is what makes it great.

Where Catcher in the Rye shows the growing of a young, disturbed adolescent in one manner, this shows the budding of an aesthete and writer. It is a peek behind the curtain at the young psyche of Fitzgerald himself, accenting his eccintricities beautifully, and it explains quite well how he came to be who he was as an author.

After just coming out of Hemingway for the first half of the semester, this is such a refreshing dose of intellectual stimulation. Well worth you time, if I might say so.

A [Blog] For None and All

I steal this title from another book of Friedrich Nietzsche’s entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra (though his replaces Book for my Blog). It is what he calls his culminating work, and the pinnacle of his philosophic work throughout his career. Different from everything else that he had written, which previously had consisted entirely of essays, treatises, and aphorisms, in this book he wrote in Germanic verse, a sort of poetic-prose. It reads more like a novel than philosophy, but he uses this medium to express differently, and one might argue better, what it was that he had been building for in the preceding 10-15 years of writing. As an advertisement, for those who do not read philosophy and have not desire to do so, the reading of Zarathustra this might serve as painless exposure to an alien world.

There seems to be a general misreading of this blog by many, and so I steal this subtitle in relation to this blog, because I believe it follows it the spirit of the discourse that Nietzsche was attempting in Zarathustra and other of his later works. Let me explain the context. Zarathustra is a prophet who has secluded himself in the mountains until he is full of wisdom, and he descends from his mountain to preach the gospel of free-spiritedness to the masses. First, Nietzsche lacks greatly for humility, and so the disgust one feels towards the arrogance of this book, shown in the fact that he sees himself in the Zarathustra role should be overlooked in order to enjoy it and mine it for truth. Secondly, though I am using the spirit of this book as a guide for my blog, I do no place myself in the role of Zarathustra in the same way. I am not so foolish as to believe that I am so overfilled with knowledge that I should descend from my lofty position and preach to the herds; rather, I am perhaps only one who likes the sound of his own voice (or typing) too much.

Spirit of Deception

The end of Part 1 of Zarathustra reads,

“When Zarathustra had said these words he became silent, like one who has not yet said his last word; long he weighed his staff in his hands, doubtfully. At last he spoke thus, and the tone of his voice changed.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.”

Going beyond the overman references and the death of gods, laying aside for now what exactly constitutes the great noon, I find something concrete and worth our latching onto in, believe it or not, the humility found in the passage. In fact, throughout Nietzsche’s later works, and I am thinking specifically of Human, All Too Human, he practices a spirit of humility that I think Christians, Buddhists, and Atheists alike would do well to adopt.

He calls for his disciples to go away from him, to resist him, and even to deny Zarathustra. What is his reasoning: perhaps I have deceived you.

This spirit of deception is indeed the spirit of this blog; not deception in the sense of willful misleading, for I feel my greatest calling is, as Augustine artfully rendered, to redeem truth as from its unjust possessors. The deception I write of is that potential deception that accompanies my every word and thought. I lack not for self-confidence bordering on arrogance, but I find it to be the most disgusting of hubris to think anyone capable of any concrete, absolute knowledge that is not subject to change somewhere in the future. By virtue of my humanity, like Nietzsche, I recognize a certain frailty and insufficiency of mind, and I cannot move beyond this, even were I to will it with all of my faith and might.

Invariably someone will retort to this spirit with the sledge-hammer of scripture, making commentary on the fact that it is certain, unchangeable…etc. My reply would be thus: God is indeed unchangeable, by virtue the definition of God he cannot be otherwise, but my perception of that perfection and unchangeableness is faulty at best, and perhaps dead-ass wrong at worst. To not admit the ambiguities and outright contradictions in Scripture is to delude oneself. Much of our scriptural knowledge comes by virtue of interpretation, and to claim one interpretation as fact, while denigrating another as fiction, is to be outside of the spirit of interpretation.

I am not belittling Scripture nor its interpretations, and I am not saying that Scripture is not built upon the true words of God, but I am pointing out the fact that the human receptor, which is the mind, is subject to fallibility, and we should in no way be ashamed of this. This gives us reason to attend seminaries and study Scripture, because were it were cut-and-dry it would be no more alive than a dictionary.

God’s Word is not subject to error, but our comprehension of it is; so too is our judgment on every matter. Thus do I believe we should all adopt a stance that allows for the spirit of deception that pervades all human endeavors.

For None and All

For these reasons I believe this blog to be for none and all. For none, because it may very well be garbage, every word of it. Maybe my words are nothing more than the mouthpiece of the devil, and you should condemn it as the blasphemous ramblings of a man, like Faust, who has sold his soul to the devil in exchange for some meaningless knowledge. Maybe you are of the persuasion, religious or otherwise, where the potentiality of error/deception is unacceptable and heretical, and to you I say that this blog may not be for you, and if all who read this fall into that category, truly it is for none.

I would hope it to be for all, though. In the same way that I think that the Mavs are the greatest NBA team around, and that everyone should love them, I recognize that many will not. So, too, do I think that what I write is true, and that it should be applied by all (why else would I write it), but I have no hopes for that actuality. No, there are matters of preference and differences of belief, and, as was said before, I might very well be shown wrong later.

So, if inclined, read and join the conversation, and let us mutually shine the light on one another’s deceptions and hypocrisy’s, truth and beauty.

My semester has become quite involved, and so I am going to write a bit without the aid of texts and objective-”proofs” (for lack of a better term). I am troubled a bit by a friend’s trouble with the Christian’s role in the public square, and I wonder if it is on account of a fundamental difference of belief, and therefore irreconcilable.

I can think of several reasons that I have begun building a life within this “square”, and I will focus on one or two, but my first question is this: what choice do I have? It is not as if I can pack my bags and move somewhere else. I suppose I might become a hermit of sorts and refuse to exist within the confines of this world, but this seems no more logical than to say that I am going to play football while only observing the rules of hockey. For better or worse, whether I like it or not, this world is indeed my home for the forseeable future, and my responsibility as a Christian is to live responsibly in it, not retreat from it.

How does one do this?

I will not presume to have the answers to this question, at least not entirely, but I do have some theories and musings towards this end. What of the “cultural mandate” that is so often spoken of in Christian circles? When we (humans) were created in the garden we were given charge to “be fruitful and multiply”, which seems to be a concept that many Christians have taken up with gusto, but we were also called to “subdue” the Earth, which seems conversely to be the great forgotten-mandate of modern Christendom. Without going in to details better elucidated by authors greater than I, Adam subdued through using his creative and cognitive powers (e.g. naming the animals), but for some reason we (mod. Xian) do not see this any longer as our call. We will birth 15 children in an effort to fulfill a part of the original call of the believer, but we will not allow ourselves to be involved in the other half.

Why?

Fear? – Are we afraid of getting swept into the raging sea of “worldliness”, and so we hide behind the shutters of faith, daring not to emerge from our cocoon until the saviour comes to claim us back from our bondage on Earth? If we dared to immerse ourselves deep within the arts, understanding form, beauty, symmetry and composition, would we then drift from God, or might we value he and his world all the more? If we began to study the sciences seriously, perhaps even reconciling Darwinian evolution with our faith through a process of reasonable calculation, would that make us “less” of a believer, or might it bring us closer to God? If through philosophy we might come to a reasonable rendering of what most pursue as a fanatical-opiate, are we abandoning the faith, or are we rescuing it from the obscurity into which it has sunk?

St. Augustine, in his De Doctrina Christiana gives a beautiful rendering of reasons behind pursuing non-Christian studies. Strongest among these is his belief that it augments our knowledge of God and scripture. He gives great examples of natural studies, such as zoology, that served as guides to deeper scriptural understanding, and I am sure that most would resound with a hearty “Amen” at this ideal. Here is the problem, though: This requires immersion into “worldly” things.

One cannot in intellectual-honesty pursue studies in the common half-assed manner and claim to know what one is talking about. Even if one claims that “outside” study should only be pursued for the sake of scriptural understandings, a claim neither I nor Augustine would hold to, then these pursuits must be done in an appropriate manner. Far too many preachers on Sunday morning have read no more of Darwin or Nietzsche than was required for the “proving” of their preconceived theories, yet they berate them from the pulpit, belittling them as if they understood them. It is shameful.

The problem is that it would require hours, days and years of study to come to a clear understanding of these men, and this is time that many are unwilling to give because it detracts from the “true calling of the believer”. The solution seems to either embrace the dark side and pursue a liberal education, filled with arts, sciences, and philosophy among others, or to flee from the world entirely, not referencing that which we choose not to understand. How then are we to stand before the Creator in good conscience, having discarded the mandate to subdue the world.

Instead, we loathe the world, shaking our head at its movies andtelevision, and shaking our fists at its politicians. What would happen if we no longer settled for mediocre (at best) Christian alternatives? What if, instead of putting out the next “Left Behind” or another in the long list of forgettable Christian media, one were to write the next ‘great American novel’ from a Christian worldview? Whereas one alienates Christianity from society, the other bridges the gap. The problem with infiltrating any of these problemed mediums is that it will require getting oneself “mired in the filth” to a degree.

I am tired…..so I am going to bed…..more later.

To help bolster my case that I am indeed a pious Christian at heart, buried somewhere beneath this humanistic-shell, let me share with you the Bible study that I have been engaged in this last week.

For my Modern World class, a class, which, ironically, is so polluted with the trappings of modernity (mainly technology and positivistic thought) that it is sucking the life out of the proposed academic critique of modernity, we read Immanuel Kant’s “Speculative Beginning of Human History”.

In this treatise Kant, a German-pietist by all accounts makes commentary on Genesis, questioning whether one can be justified in adding speculation to human history. He opens with,

“Surely it is permissible to insert speculations into the progression of a history in order to fill gaps in the reports, because what comes before, as a distant cause, and what follows, as effect, can give a fairly reliable clue for discovering the intervening causes so as to make the transition comprehensible.” (109)

In other words, he questions whether doing what Milton does in Paradise Lost or, to be current, what Mel Gibson does with the crucifixion is allowable. Is it so wrong to fill in the gaps where explicit history leaves off?

What follows is an explanation of the fall of man viewed through the lense of reason and imagination alone. Mankind is endowed with reason, and ruled by this inherited nature he is content. He and his wife are unashamed, comfortable, and well provided for. Instinct, provided from their birth, guides them.

Desire in the form of imagination precipitated his downfall. Rather than contentment with what man had, he began comparing different options, and soon greed and luxury took control. He writes,

“Perhaps a mere fruit whose appearance resembled that of others that he had tasted and found agreeable tempted man to experiment… He discovered in himself an ability to choose his own way of life and thus not to be bound like other animals to only a single one.”

“…He stood as if at the edge of the abyss; for besides the particular objects of desire on which instinct had until now made him dependent, there opened to him an infinitude of them…and it was now impossible for him to turn back from his once taste state of freedom to his former servitude.” (112-3)

The remainder of the essay gets somewhat convoluted, but a central point is made that the unsocial behaviour that results from man’s withdrawal into himself actually brings about societal good. In this way, one can make a fortunate fall argument, exalting Providence in the process.

In another of Kant’s essays, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent” he explains this more clearly, writing,

“Man wills concord; but nature better knows what is good for the species: she wills discord. He wills to live comfortably and pleasantly; but nature wills that he should be plunged from laziness and inactive comfort into work and hardship, so that he will in turn seek by his own cleverness to pull up from them.”

“The natural impulse to do this – the sources of unsociability and of thoroughgoing resistance that give rise to so much evil but also drive men anew toward further exertions of their powers… – indicates the design of a wise creator, not the hand of a malicious spirit who fiddled with the creator’s masterful arrangement or enviously spoiled it.” (21-2)

What Kant leaves us with, contrary to popular opinion, is an optimistic potential outcome for humanity. He is by no means wholly optimistic, and he seems to leave room for man to step from his perch over the abyss back into barbarism, but there is yet potential for good. There is, by virtue of a providential order a move from bad to good in human history, and it is thus that he advocates the social, rational morality for which he is so famous. This move towards good is not achievable entirely, and so maybe bad to good is a bit of a misnomer; instead, he says we move from worse to better.

Why You Should Care?

Do I lose my Jesus-card completely when I herald Kant as a spiritual handmaid, along with Nietzsche, Thoreau and, God forbid, Darwin? – or is there possibly room for them under the larger umbrella of Christian formation?

I make not secret that my bias is toward these thinkers, and maybe this is owing in part to the same spirit within me that enjoyed skipping high school because it was illicit; nonetheless, I hold this to be entirely beneficial to a believer in much the same way as those other thinkers previously spoken of.

There are a host of comments I could make about this, but today I think I will limit it to the comfort of them. It is just nice to point out some reasonableness amidst those areas that call for faith in that which is unseen. One finds himself on the verge of bowing out when he constantly must confront the Nietzsche’s of the world (both past and present) with the miraculous.

Miracles, by their very nature defy rationality. It is just not reasonable that a burning-bush spoke the words of God, that the Earth stood still, or that a Jewish god-man in the 1st century rose from the dead in atonement for our sins. I stand in support of the miraculous, but touting these arguments alone makes for crack-pots and the zealots destined for late-night TBN. Is God not also the God of rationality?

Christianity is too often laughed out of the public-square, because its adherents refuse to dialogue with the world on the world’s terms.

I say, “Cheers!” to the reasonable.