Faith and the Reason to Believe God

How would you sell a retirement fund? Would you persuade your client of its security by telling them the funds were already in it? If so, what motive could you give them that might compel them to invest their own? It seems to me that we often expect God to show us what the “pay off” will be in this or that situation before we will trust him in it; we expect to first see the money in the account before we put it there. Instead, the promise of the gospel is that the account is secure: in Jesus, God is now for us at all times and is never against us and will never disappoint those who believe such a promise – and if we are to enjoy the security and stability of such a God, we must believe that promise; we must “invest” our faith in him by believing such promises. And in doing so, we will discover the unfailing satisfaction and stability of God as our "desire" and "portion" (Ps. 73:25, 26). To expect to see God honor his promise without first believing him is not the exercise of faith but the denial of it.

Herman Bavinck puts it like this:

Christ secured [a] full, real, and total salvation. Faith, accordingly, is not a work, a condition, an intellectual assent to the statement “Christ died for you” but [the] act of [relying] on Christ himself, …. It is a living [i.e. “investing”] faith….

[H]umans are always inclined to reverse the God-ordained order [of faith and assurance]. They want to be sure of the outcome before using the means and in order to be exempt from using the means. But it is the will of God that we shall take the way of faith, and then he unfailingly assures us of complete salvation in Christ. (RD, IV, 37)

In wanting proof up front, it is as though we say to God, “You are not worth trusting in this or
that situation (let alone for eternity) till you show me what you intend to do today or tomorrow for me and I approve of it; till then, I will not trust you.” Faith that pleases God rests, like David,
in the goodness and mercy of God to be good and merciful toward us because of his Son, Jesus.

Artificial Equality A Necessity

In his sermon titled Membership in The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis drops yet another bombshell. He says,

You have often heard that though in the world we hold different stations, yet we are all equal in the sight of God. There are, of course, senses in which this is true. But I believe there is a sense in which this maxim is the reverse of the truth. I am going to venture to say that artificial equality is necessary in the life of the State, but that in the Church we strip off this disguise, we recover our real inequalities, and are thereby refreshed and quickened.

I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for [doing so]. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of demoncracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.

That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe [that] the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple [is] as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. But since we learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that "all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because his authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned preists should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interefered with because it is constantly abused.

Equality is for me in the same position as clothes. It is the result of the Fall and the remedy for it. Do not misunderstand me. I am not in the least belittling the value of this egalitarian fiction which is our only defence against one another's cruelty. I should view with the strongest disapproval any proposal to abolish manhood suffrage, or the Married Woman's Property Act. But the function of equality is purely protective. It is medicine, not food. (p. 167ff)

This is refreshing. Not only because he recognizes what we too often complain of today (i.e. corrupt leaders, both civil and religious), but because his explanation makes sense not only of those things that appear to be natural authority structures (i.e. the state over citizens, parents over children, husbands over wives, teacher over student, etc.) but also because it gives us the freedom to affirm such structures in themselves and to recognize that we are the problem and not God's created authority structures. It is too easy today to fix the blame elsewhere and not first look within ourselves find the blame.

This is not to say that such structures can't be (or aren't now being) abused, but that if they are, it's not always because authority itself is the problem; it may more often be the case that the man or woman in authority is. Even here, though, the gospel informs us that neither the authority nor the person are the ultimate problem, and that both will one day "obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). The promise of the gospel is not that authority is the problem, but that there is a King - Jesus Christ - who has begun to rule and whose rule will one day be consummated over all things in the New Creation.

Mathematics as Beauty

Beauty - what is it? We can all point to things we find beautiful; we can even (sometimes) explain why we find them beautiful. But what is that quality called "beauty" in them that makes them so attractive, especially when "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"? Yes, it's a cliche, but it's true: so many people find so many different things beautiful.

Take mathematics, for instance. As a student of mathematics, I am sometimes asked if I studied it because I liked it or because I thought it would be useful. There is no question: I absolutely loved it. But then I'm asked, "Why?" Here, I crumble. Yes, I like "right" answers, and yes, I like logic. But is that all? Am I simply attracted to sterile and rigid ways of thinking? While I agree that there is, in fact, something comforting about knowing that "right" answers exist and that they can be found by the proper use of methods and reasoning, I've always cringed at "right answers" as my first answer; besides, meeting someone who likes getting 7 (every time!) from 4 and 3 doesn't usually make for engaging conversation.

So I'm left wondering why I like mathematics. I think it has something to do with the order and relationship of things. Think of music. There's a sense in which one must play the "right" notes in order to play the song in a way that makes it recognizable. On the other hand, there's no "right" way to play a song. One song may have dozens, or even hundreds, of arrangements, and all of them sound "good" in different ways and to different ears. But the point is this: every distinct arrangement will have enough of the "real" song in it to be recognized as an arrangement of "that" song.

Mathematics is as much about "hitting the right notes" as it is about "playing the arrangement" correctly. The difference is that instead of notes, mathematicians use particular facts, theorems, arithmetic rules, identities, etc., and their arrangement is in using various theorms or facts at various stages in the mathematical argument to arrive at particular conclusions; the song they play is what you see on the board. And I think this is where the beauty of mathematics comes in. It's not only getting the right answer that I enjoy, but in watching it unfold. I am not greatly moved by hearing middle C being played by itself, but I am greatly moved when a musician plays it (and all the other notes) at the right moment with the right strength and tone in the middle of a larger piece of music. Likewise in mathematics, knowing the Binomial Theorem itself is no big deal, but seeing how it can be used in statistical analysis to predict specific outcomes of a Binomial Random variable can be exhilirating! And all the more so when you've tried to predict such outcomes using only algebra and arithmetic.

The right order of things in relationship to each other is crucial in making awesome impressions on us. Movies and literature also illustrate this idea well. If you watched any one scene of a movie or read any one chapter from a book, its impact on you will likely be far less impressive than if you watched every scene of the movie or read every chapter of the book (this is why movie trailers entice people rather than satisfy). But even here, you could watch every scene of the movie out of the director's intended order (by using "scene selections" on your DVD menu) or read the chapters of the book out of order. By doing so, your understanding of the whole story would likely be better than if you had only watched one scene or read one chapter, but the emotive impact would likely be less than if you had viewed or read them in their "right" order; it's more enjoyable watching or reading from beginning to end.

If we only see the scene of Gandalf's fall in the Mines of Moria, its import is diminished if all we think is that an old man has fallen to his death. Frodo's tears will be misunderstood as only lamenting the death of a friend and not also the loss of his protective guide through lands unknown against foes unimagined. And the only way to "get it" is to watch from the beginning and learn who the old man with the beard is; then his loss will mean what it was intended to mean by both the movie's director and the book's author.

Not everyone likes movies, music, or mathematics - and that's OK; there's a lot of things whose beauty I don't appreciate, but that doesn't mean they're not there - it just means that I don't have the right "eyes to see." My point is that there does exist a beauty in each of them, and that it has at least as much (if not more) to do with the arrangement of the individual parts as with the parts themselves.

A Child Fit For Heaven

David Copperfield begins with young Davy's birth. He is born to his recently widowed mother, raised for several years by her and their beloved nurse Pegotty, and then sent away to a London boarding school upon his mother's remarriage to the abusive and unfeeling Mr. Murdstone. He remains there long enough for his mother to conceive and give birth to a younger brother, of which David knows nothing till his next visit home.

Following her marriage to Murdstone but prior to Davy's departure for London, his mother had been discouraged - prohibited, really - from the kind of affection with which she'd hitherto expressed toward him, and the reader is constantly frustrated by scenes in which his mother longs to shower him with maternal affection but which abort under Murdstone's disapproval. When Davy returns home on holiday, only to find Murdstone out for the day, the anticipation of the affectionate reunion of Clara, "my boy, Davy", and Pegotty is delicious. The scene is moving, mostly due to the involuntary and overwhelming rise of affection that Dickens describes (in the first person of Davy). I can't help but wonder if God has given, through the pen of Dickens, a very true (though certainly not exhaustive) picture of worship and abandone, in so far as a child loves and adores his mother:

I went softly into the [parlor]. [Davy's mother] was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hadn she help against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was [correct in thinking] that she had no other companion.

I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips.

I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.

The Lost Art of Description

C.S. Lewis wrote a book titled Studies in Words that I only just recently discovered; it is an enjoyable read. On page 7 he defines 'verbicide' as "the murder of a word" and writes:

Inflation is one of the commonest [ways in which verbicide happens]; those who aught us to say awfully for 'very', tremendous for 'great', sadism for 'cruelty', and unthinkable for 'undesirable' were verbicides. Another way is verbiage, by which I here mean the use of a word as a promise to pay which is never going to be kept. The use of significant as if it were an absolute, and with no intention of ever telling us what the thing is significant of, is an example. So is diametrically when it is used merely to put opposite into the superlative. . .

Here we come to what has become so common since Lewis' day, in both private conversation and public debate (in which the open examination or testing one's political views or theological convictions is seen by the 'brethren' as treachery),

. . .Verbicide is committed when we exchange Whig and Tory for Liberal and Conservative. But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them.

Two things are worth noting here. The first is that Lewis calls our desire to approve or disapprove of something the cause of our verbicide and not the result of it. This signifies our willingness to kill words in order to offer our verdict on their referent, rather than our willingness to discover a thing's worth by the right use of words. In other words, we are more biased and less reasonable. We are more comfortable making our view palatable and persuasive, even if it means the abuse of language, rather than confront our views 'naked', as it were - to display them as they are in themselves - and in such an honest light let them commend themselves for others' consideration.

The second thing worth noting is that, in such an atmosphere of 'evaluation', we are not as free to describe things as we might think; we constantly feel the pressure to evaluate them and render judgments - often on the spot. Have you ever wondered how so many talk shows and pastors can possibly have so many opinions on so many issues? When was the last time you met someone who claimed to be a political Conservative or Liberal who couldn't refrain at some point in the conversation from injecting an evaluation of his own or the other party?

In so often depending upon explicit evaluations, I think we tragically neglect the most winsome form of commendation: honest and descriptive praise. This is no mere PR spin. What I mean is, at least in my own experience, that the things that have most captured my attention are those that have been commended to me by people whose main objective was not my conversion to their point of view, but rather the clear description of what they valued to much. It's as though my response to them was negligible to them - just as long as they could put before me that which they so greatly admired. We need more compelling descriptions today, not mere recruitment campaigns. If the cause is worthy, it will sell itself.

A Christian Humanism

In my limited but earnest adventures into the history of philosophy, I've learned that the term humanism hasn't always (or even primarily) carried the secular and negative connotations it so often does today. For most Christians, humanism means "man-centered" and the climax of rational arrogance; for many non-Christians, it means the discovery and pursuit of everything in life that is within the human grasp. Historically for many thinkers, though, to be a humanist was to believe that there exists some answer to the question, "What is the essence of Humanity?" (this is very similar to what Christians rightly ask). How one answered the question, of course, varied from one philosopher or theologian to another; but that an answer existed was axiomatic.

Descartes proposed that "to think" was humanity's defining quality and by using one's reason and methodical doubt, all knowledge and meaning could be derived (how one arrives at certainty by way of systemic doubt didn't seem to bother him or his followers). Pascal began from a similar point, but rather than assume reason's sufficiency as an instrument by which we arrive at all knowledge, he used his reason to examine the nature and limitations of reason itself. Thus, due to reason's 'reasonable' limitations and fallibility, humanity was dependent upon revelation for a fuller, more reliable, knowledge of itself, and in the Bible's revelation, said Pascal, we find the "glory and refuse of man" explained in both the dignified image of God ("glory") that he bears, and the ignominious ruin of Adam's fall ("refuse"). And so, Pascal saw our essence as being made in God's image that is presently distorted but will one day be restored.

Since these two thinkers, many have come and gone, but the most remarkable thing to mention of most of them is that they have rejected the claim that humanity has any essence. Instead, they have proposed variants on what I'll call non-essential or non-idealistic philosophies: 1) that there is no essence or purpose to which we are beholden and we are thus free to will our own existence in our pursuit of the passions and accompanying expressions that we desire most (Friedrich Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols), or 2) that man has created God in man's own image, a God who then 'makes' man in his own (humanistic) image that then leads to man thinking of himself as the object of God's love, which is a love not unlike man's since everything of God is merely man's projection of himself onto God ( Ludwig Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity), or 3) that man creates his essence by virtue of his choices, but that what he chooses does, in fact, result in some human essence that did not previously exist (Jean Paul Sartre in Existentialism is a Humanism), or 4) the quest to either answer the question of humanity's existence or to justify not having to ask it are both non-sensical, and the sooner we get over asking the question, answering it, or even explaining why we don't have to, the better of we'll all be (Richard Rorty in Trotsky and the Wild Orchids).

Now maybe this post's title begins to make sense. If the biblical account of man is to be heard, we must begin to speak of A Christian Humanism - that is to say, a Christian account of humanity's essence. Clearly, this is to use the term humanism in a very different manner than in the phrase 'secular humanism'.

The main reason, I would argue (as have others more learned than myself), that so many un-biblical accounts of humanity have gotten a hearing throughout history is because such fallen accounts of human experience have been able to make sense of so much of human experience to fallen ears, and (and this is key!) in ways that do not depend on the Bible's account. Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that the human heart is neutral, just waiting for the most reasonable explanation of itself to come along. However, wrong ways of looking at situations appear more plausible as more and more facts and experiences can be explained by them. This is what false philosophies have done well: they give false accounts of reality in ways that sound compelling but that also do not require the Bible's input to make sense. It's actually very similar to good lying.

What we need is to find compelling ways, that accord with Scripture, to account for people's experience. This is no small task. Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and David Wells have each, in their own unique ways, expressed that our main difficulty in doing this is (and will continue to be) the fact that in our Western, Rational, Industrial age, the gospel of Jesus Christ appears more and more preposterous. We have created a modern world in which reality no longer looks or sounds real, and in which fancy and distraction are only too welcome.