(Redefine) Holiness

For us, holiness and purity have traditionally been thought of as something fragile and vulnerable. It was the innocence of Eden, the delicate virginity and blissful ignorance of the child’s joy. It was the white cloth. And then we encountered life, which was filled with agonistic pain, suffering and mortality. We felt cast from Eden and raped. We became realistic, now knowing both good and evil. The white cloth had now been stained and that made us frustrated, because we longed for the days when once things were well. This, then, frames the atonement as a kind of stain remover, a cosmic bleaching of our accidental spill. I don’t think Christ came to clean a dirty rag. I don’t think Holiness is weak or vulnerable. Holiness is the stubborn and counter-cultural and counter-intuitive initiative to enter into the dirtiness of this world, to bind with it. It is set-apart from the insecure Nietzschian over-man wish-dreams that occupy our mythic tales of Beowulf and Odysseus. It is set apart from the American Dream of rising up from soiled rags to the heights of an individual empire and Trump-ish wealth. It is set apart from the waning imperial assumptions of corporate bounty hunting and instead releases from itself every illusory sign of status and success – grounded in the eternal virtues of compassion, wisdom and honesty – to rest in a peace that transcends every social demand to move into places of despair, bringing hope. This is the atonement. This is the way of Christ. This is Holiness.

Legal Assumptions

I think judges and legislators have often tried to do their best to pursue justice (many obviously have not even attempted), but whatever the motivations of our public officials, one thing to not forget is that every law is packed filled with assumptions. Assumptions of value, assumptions of ethics, political authority and responsibility, the role of government and the flourishing of society, individualism, socialism, religious assumptions and much more.

One example of this was in my recent studying of tort law, I’ve come across an early case Vaughan v. Menlove (1837) which deals with the issue of whether the law should apply to the individual a standard of prudence relative to their own individual background and mental difficulties or instead whether the law should apply to an imaginary person entitled: the reasonable person of ordinary prudence – and then measure the person at-hand to this imaginary character. The case had to do with the defendant building a hay rick which caught on fire and burnt down the plaintiff’s property. The defendant claimed essentially, “hey, I’m not a very bright guy. I don’t know about what will or what will not catch on fire.” He claimed that the law ought to determine what is reasonable for him to know, not some imaginary “ordinary person of reasonable prudence.” The court found, instead, in favor of the plaintiff’s instruction.

There was another case Delair v. Mcadoo (1936) where the defendant had been driving on balding tires when he pulled up next to the plaintiff, the tires blew and it caused and accident. The court ruled that it’s not just about what a reasonable person knows, but what they should know; meaning, a reasonable person would have gotten the tires checked out. Why? Two reasons: 1) the universal usage of the automobile and 2) the dangerousness of the automobile. Both of these reasons give cause for a reasonable person to know about its moving parts.

Here’s my problem with this mentality. Underneath this imaginary “reasonable person” is a set of subjective assumptions as to what a reasonable person finds valuable and worth investigating, being concerned about, etc. The law has, however, proven to expect individuals and corporations to be anxiously (and what I would consider: unreasonably) concerned with avoiding any possible degree of harm to everybody. It becomes unlawful to charge your laptop computer in an outlet that extends openly across the floor in coffee bean because it would be negligent of the organization to allow for an accident to happen. It becomes unlawful for McDonalds to fill a coffee cup with a hot liquid without writing a notice on the cup that the container of coffee contains hot liquid. This act of jurisprudence renders in society undue levels of insecurity and, in my opinion, oftentimes a perversion of priorities according to what is actually reasonable and prudent.

Reasonable people can disagree. Reasonable people can have differing values. We have competing visions of value, that’s life, that’s society. However, according to our legal system at present, there exists some objective set of values that an imaginary “reasonable person” holds to which we are held accountable. I have no conclusion about this, or even think that it is intrinsically wrong for our courts to impose. The point I want to make is just that our law is not objective, it is not obvious and is entirely dependent upon the subjective opinions and assumptions of men and women – and always will. So let us cease this nonsense about impartial law, law is never impartial.

God is (not)

God is not absent to be talked about as if He weren’t in the room, merely an object to be scientifically analyzed, a mere idea to be intellectually maintained, a lie to be insecurely defended, an angry grandfather in the sky to resent, a genie to whom we make wishes and seek to do our will or me or you, as if we contained the divine.

God is not an imaginary friend subject to the bending and shaping of the mind but rather the sublime ground of being, our King, our Begetter, our Conscience, our Father to be worshipped and adored who is made known by the person of Jesus Christ in whom the image of the Father is revealed and by the person of the Holy Spirit in whom the presence of Christ is made manifest.

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Jn. 17:3

Repentance of Wisdom

And so like Solomon I prayed for Wisdom.

“Wisdom, LORD, above all else I desire. I groan and long for the jewels of Wisdom’s shine within my mind. May I lead with wisdom, may I see into the mysteries of the Divine to search out what has been hidden.”

But, like Solomon, my heart has been turned aside and I have fallen into the depths of despair seeing in all things their vanity. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! To what end do we suffer, for what do we strive? I too have discerned the wisdom in eating, drinking and finding joy in one’s labor. But this is the lowest of expectations, is it not? These are the musing of wisdom, but not of inspiration, exaltation and grandeur. One may be downcast by a perverted heart but love overcomes an immensity of sin and will set anew the flame within. Never sink below the depths of wisdom’s final conclusion, that all is vanity and grasping after the wind, but this is only the mind’s reason. Come now, my God, I was foolish in my prayer for wisdom. You granted me what I asked for, but it led me into the caverns of despair.

What shall I ask for now, as I sit, a failed steward of what was once a well-sized estate?

Let me consider well this next prayer.

I become who I am

Shape and form molded by the turning ignition of evolution’s flame. The way I am is who I am, so what is the way I am? Am I what as much as who?

To describe the indescribable is to round off a square at the edges: it cannot be done without destroying the object itself. So let me be, Oh Soul, listen to me and live. Let me move in you and let me move you, do not destroy me by the skeptic’s poison lest you be paralyzed in the depths of despairing unknowing. Live by faith or die by illusion. Our bodies are made to never know it all, knowledge was man’s original failure.

Truth is not to be perceived by the concepts of one’s mind, but known by the living out of its Spirit. What is Good? What is True? What is Beautiful? One and the same!

Reason is but a simple maid to clear out the dust from these ancient attics but it cannot spark itself nor direct its own path. Beauty is what drives us, moves us and directs us. Reason is then what turns and works out the meaning of what moves us, and if well-working, will bring us only deeper into the eternal mysteries from whence we’ve come and to where we will go.

Do what is good. Live in the simplicity of virtue, driven by the current of time and the winds of the Divine.

The self is a slippery thing for it cannot be held, only embraced.

Who am I?

I am an instigator, frustrater and motivator.

I will not harm but will wound,

So don’t scream but go ahead and cry.

I doubt my doubts and doubt that I do.

I philosophize, theologize and recognize

that there’s more to life than we’ll ever know.

I try to relate, celebrate and incarnate

the love I once received from a being I’ve never known.

I’ve loved and lost and when I did, there it was.

I routinely laugh though hardly cry,

yet always cry out against confusion.

I’m confused, bemused and reused

by friends who mean, well…nothing at all.

I am at peace, peaced-out and in pieces,

I’m here, everywhere and getting there.

By the Grace of God go I

I have written a 13 page research paper for Metaphysics (one of the most difficult philosophy classes at Westmont) in three hours, and got an A (one of the highest grades in the class).

I have worked very hard and spent many hours studying for a test, only to get a C on it.

I have performed at a level of public speaking that people have compared me to Billy Graham.

I have performed at a level of public speaking that people avoid eye contact with me afterwards and even the unprepared opponent does better than I did.

It has become painfully obvious that I retain a potential for greatness, but that potential is dependent upon my ability to allow the Spirit of God to speak through me, for this was the difference in each circumstance: I was in a place of humbled surrender and anxious focus in the great performances and a place of (more-or-less) settled confidence in the poor performances.

My success and greatness of performance is entirely dependent upon the Grace of God, so if you see me do something that seems incredible, awe-inducing and transcendant…if you read something I’ve written and marvel at the wisdom and brilliance that birthed those words, know that it is the Grace of God that produces such beauty and I am a gardener, trying my best to cultivate the ground of my soul to allow for the natural processes of fertilization and photosynthesis to take place.

My Penultimate Love

What if Jesus ought to be not the subject of our worship but the penultimate subject of our worship? All that he does is to glorify the Father. We look to Him SO THAT we might know the Father. Just as pleasure is a perception of the good, so too, might Jesus be a perception of the Father? It is not appropriate to love that which points to something beyond itself more than that other thing…that’s the point of a representation. Jesus is the perfect image of the Father, perhaps we need to be more careful about how we “worship Jesus” Do we worship Jesus or worship the Father through honoring our King, Jesus Christ?

I do think this is crucially important because it reminds us that the subject of our ultimate love, devotion and worship is beyond our perceptions, conceptions, ideas and notions; beyond, images, representations and ikons. It reminds us that the Father is concealed in the midst of a divine revelation. This is our God Israel, cloaked in mist and fog, you cannot see his face, only where he’s just been.

Preamble to a Year of Shalom

A small, short-lived ripple in the Pacific Sea of human endeavor, we ordinary radicals stand separately together, summoned to a Divine Commission, imbued with certain inalienable rights, to create and not destroy, to follow forgotten ways of resurrection seeking the shalom of our city. With Words and Ideas, our flesh carries a Creator’s love to the shadowed depths of spoiled hate, for we hear not the fear of our enemy’s taunt but the yearning silence beneath their conscious shell, to be set free from the wretched soul, damned as we, that pleads with God each fragile breath to fall by Grace into the courageous flight of faith.

And so we brawl against an Empire that seeks to crucify the indomitable force of love in this world, trusting that the Universe pulsates at the rhythm of love and will not be overcome by the brittle impotence of weapon and curse.

Dancing, each our own way, to the melody which first set heaven’s wheels to spin, we appear as fools to those who cannot hear the chords of life yet proven wise are ways that rise again from beds six-feet underground unto a freshened earth.

Christ on cross raises high the torch of love, enlightening the world as an incomparable flame to the dim fading wick of the present age, breathing new life into the tired, poor and huddled masses, disillusioned by the storied pomp of national perjury; so still, the City of God glistens against the cold waves of the Atlantic shore, in this, the darkest hour of Liberty’s subtle deceit etched in stone: oppression sabotaged by an Exodus birthed by faith no more than a mustard seed.

Philosophy: beyond academia to the salvation of mankind

To me, there is an oppressive weight within the halls of academia that stifle an authentic love of truth and tarnish the humble art of I-Thou discourse, converting the natural inquiries of man to unnatural and irrelevant analyses. Academia, by its valuing production of analytical sophistication above Wisdom, has turned philosophy into sophistry leaving the honorable academic to either harden beliefs into publication which ought to have remained in dialogic liquid form or encourages energies to be spent in vain pursuit of issues with little relevancy.

How many academics began their studies with noble intentions to pursue truth only to later find themselves lost in a world demanding publication and credential and buried under mountains of debt to get there. Where do the great thinkers turn to provide food for their children or ought the philosopher never be a mother or father? On the contrary, philosophy is not to be excluded to the ivory towers of academic life. Surely, it belongs there as its heartbeat, but so too in the life of culture itself. Let the bankers and store owners, let the insurance salesmen and computer technicians, let the roofers and tentmakers all be philosophers in the truest sense, seeking truth and wisdom for the love of it and not for financial gain.

“I don’t have time to read all those Philosophers from ancient days to present,” I hear in protest from the streets.

Granted, there have been great thinkers over the years and it may well benefit someone who reads their works; however, I am consistently impressed with how many people so easily have discerned a world of ideas and a world of materiality without ever having read Plato. It is fascinating how many high school students can tell you that concerning ethics we ought to pursue moderation in all things without ever having read Aristotle. I have heard many people speak of the viciousness of objectifying and using people as a means to an end without ever having read Kant. Perhaps the vocabulary is different, but the sense is the same.

It is in honest discourse with God, others and ourselves that philosophy takes place. Forgiveness, humility and honesty are the key virtues here and all people have the present capacity – however uneducated and however busy – to live lives marked by these things, pursuing truth and wisdom with devotion, not as a means to an end but as an end in itself.

Is our present condition a love for wisdom or production, for truth or empire?

May, you, professors of philosophy not cheapen your love for wisdom and truth for mere position, publication and payment. May you not succumb to the pressures of academic debate, seeking to defend a tempted ego challenged with matters that rarely touch the humble of heart. Do not succumb to the lies of our age that declare that you are what you produce. Your greatness is not to be measured by whether you generate famous articles in the finest academic journals, nor whether you produce some ‘original masterpiece’ of perceived social benefit but rather your greatness will be found in the degree to which you are able to help the foolish become wise, serving those whom other professors overlook. Students are not mere necessary conditions for pursuing research or gaining higher title in the University. As you serve the least of these, we, foolish students filled with prejudice, arrogance and apathy, you will be serving Christ himself.

I am so thankful for the professors at Westmont who have routinely displayed such humility and love for us (the young and foolish) with utter patience and devotion. These are the heroes of their profession!

But as for me, I do not think that I can pursue the course of academic life and feel the freedom to rest in the authentic unknowing of truth’s eternal darkness. The ever present “I don’t know” and genuine resolution to discourse within my soul seems counter to the demands for production, publication and presentation that I hear from those old men with cherry oak leather chairs and tenured positions at foreign institutions.

In rather stark contrast, I am compelled by another voice as I hear Christ, with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, on the streets and beaches, in pubs and coffee shops, in churches and restaurants asking questions and being asked questions and there not just pursuing truth but living Truth in being One with the Father in the relevancy of the moment. This is philosophy at its most practical and significant. For here, at the point of genuine inquiry, when the bread of life meets a hungry groan, nourishment is had. The strongest of addictions, the hardest of prejudices’, and the most paralyzing confusions are touched and potentially transformed by the power of philosophy.

Let not the Christian balk at this statement thinking that to attribute such strength to philosophy is to disregard or diminish the person of Christ for philosophy is the love of wisdom and so for the Christian, such wisdom is Christ (the Divine Logos) and so the true philosopher is a lover of Christ and is this not common Orthodox belief that love of Christ (the embodiment of ‘love of God’ and ‘love of man’) should have such transformative powers? True philosophy, then, becomes both accessible to all, the practicing of God’s greatest commandment in which all the Law and Prophets are fulfilled and also imbued with a transformative saving power to bring the hopeless hope, the dead to life and the slave, freedom. As we are driven by our perception of reality, it is no surprise that philosophy should have such practical power as it directly shapes and transforms this perception. And the nature of that transformation, because it is aimed at the Truth, can be said to be Good for the Truth is Christ – the perfect image of the Father.

Now, the Father is not an object to be dissected and exploited but a subject (The Subject) to be known with intimacy; in fact, there is such closeness to the Father, that His transcendence lies not in his distance but in his frighteningly immanent closeness. We fail to objectify God, not out of a lack of knowledge about Him but due to an overabundance of knowledge about Him. We see darkness in the divine, not because there is nothing there but because, like gazing into the sun, we are blinded by an overwhelming light. Sensory overload is our present relation to the divine.

How then, do we aim to live truth and know the Father? We must practice obedience to life: renouncing bitterness, forgiving wrongs done to us, remembering that we have been shown grace by our Father for greater wrongs than these; forfeiting the promulgation of our ego, humbling ourselves before the other, deconstructing prejudice, seeking Wisdom with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and listening to the other’s words attentively hoping to aid their benefit, yes, even enemies; and shattering the deceitfulness of our self image, cultivating solitude and authenticity, seeing our whole selves as we are and communicating that reality to others. In this way, we live truth, trusting that the God of Grace will be sufficient for us and in this way the love of wisdom (as it becomes truly incarnate through us by a living experimentation with the hypothesis that Christ is Lord) opens us to the reception of Divine Grace and therein lies our salvation and eternal life.