Beatitude Week - Day 5: The Hungry, The Merciful, and the Pure in Heart

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Whew! Finally we’re in familiar blessing territory! Jesus has been talking this WHOLE TIME about being divinely blessed, and he hasn’t once mentioned being blessed for having faith, praying for blessings, or giving money. He has these odd notions that blessings come from humility, mourning, and meekness. So odd.

But now, here we are! Blessed are the righteous! Get on God’s side and get blessed!

Except…that’s not exactly what it says, is it? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are those who desire to be right with God the way a starving person desires food, the way a person in the desert wants water. And they shall be satisfied – not, “and they shall satisfy themselves,” but shall be satisfied. The object and the source of righteousness is God.

And there’s a reason this is 4th down the list. Before we try to determine if we are on God’s side, or vice versa, it would do us good to achieve humility, a proper gravity toward the suffering in the world, and a proper perspective on spiritual and earthly power. And it might help us to remember Who is really righteous.

It would also be good for us to remember that the Righteous One is also the Merciful One. Everybody likes to receive mercy. We really like it when the traffic officer lets us off with a warning. But it certainly is difficult to give mercy. We want people who have hurt our feelings to make it up to us in extravagant ways. We want people who have harmed us prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Except ourselves, of course. We clearly deserve a second chance. Possibly a third, or fiftieth.

Blessed are the pure in heart. We often take this to mean innocent, or unsullied. I tend to think it’s the other definition of pure – made up of one thing. Pure gold is only gold. Pure honey is only honey. And the pure in heart have hearts made up of one love – the love of God. And the promise is that their love will be rewarded with the sight of the Beloved.

Again, the placement is important. The ones who seek to see God are also the ones called to be merciful, and following this Beatitude, called to be peacemakers. To love the Lord your God with all your heart does not mean to separate yourself from the world – it means to see God in it, and work to do God’s will in it. It means to see the image of God in our neighbors. And as G.K. Chesterton said “Jesus tells us to love our neighbors and to love our enemies, because often they are the same people.” The pure in heart shall see God – sooner, and in more places, than you might think.

Bible Verses That Freak Me Out #24 - "My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me?"

Five days before, he had entered the Holy City in triumph. The masses hooted and hollered and paved his way with palm branches and threw their dirty and torn robes into the street. “Son of David!” “Messiah!” “King of the Jews,” they called him. He humbles his enemies, disrupts worship in the temple – all preparing the way for the coming of the great and glorious King!

Behold the King, high and lifted up!

Crucified.

His title now became his accusation. Guilty. The crime - being King of the Jews. The real king of the Jews, Herod, found their first face-to-face encounter the night before disappointing. This Messiah was not nearly so entertaining as the last one, that Baptist fellow whose head he had to give up. Even more removed, the real king of kings, the real ruler of the Jews, Tiberius Caesar, didn’t even know this crucified peasant king existed. He had provincial governors and other bureaucrats to deal with these sorts of petty insurgencies. If a Caesar ever had to take such matters into his own hands, you could bet there would be no more Holy City, and no more talk of Messiahs.

Those who fancied themselves the spiritual kings of the Jews rejoiced in the punishment for this blasphemer, and mocked him, quoting from one of their psalms. “He saved others – he can’t save himself! He is the ‘King of Israel’, let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. ‘He trusts in God – let God rescue him.’”

And the crucified King says nothing. Except – another quote, from the same psalm his enemies quoted. One last debate about the meaning of the scriptures between the priests and the prophet – the last word on the meaning of the life – and death – of the Son of Man. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!” He didn’t even say it in Hebrew. His last words a soul-wrenching exclamation in the common tongue.

G.K. Chesterton, in “Orthodoxy:”
“That a good man might have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point – and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach.

But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this is what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man; and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped from heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.”

The last word – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Except…

There is the small matter of Sunday morning, and a certain empty tomb…

Can of Worms: Evolution

Tomorrow is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin! Seems like a good day to talk about a controversial topic! I am a little nervous because I’m taking a risk here – the last time I brought up a controversial topic, I simply quoted someone else to help define the problem. This time, I’m going to venture some opinion of my own. Some of you are going to disagree with me. Also, fair warning, it’s going to be a long post, because, well, it’s a can of worms.

Depending on who you are, when you think of Charles Darwin, you might think:
1)The father of modern evolutionary theory, and a leading light in scientific history
2)A name you vaguely remember from science class – something about a Beagle?
3)A name you saw on a bumper sticker inside a fish with legs on it this one time
4)The guy who ruined the world

If you are person number 2 or 3, you’re probably not going to care about this post. If you’re either of the other two, read on.

A Personal History
First, a little biographical record of things I have thought about the creation of the world. I spent my childhood and youth as a Biblical literalist, as far as Genesis was concerned, but learned about evolution in public school. I really didn’t think much about the dissonance between the two. I was somewhat confused, but tended to go with flow depending on the environment.

As I continued my religious education, I learned there is more than one way to skin a cat, in relation to reading the first few chapters of Genesis – more on this later. I became even more confused. I would occasionally wander wistfully through the Christian bookstore, look at the multiplicity of titles on the shelf seeking to explain it all to me, get overwhelmed, heave a sigh and wander away again.

At some point in the past few years, I became…a theistic evolutionist. Which is to say, I believe God created the universe, and that evolution is the process by which the variety of species on earth derived from a common ancestor, including all the humans who we all know and love so much. I was a secret theistic evolutionist, because people tended to get upset whenever we talked about such things. If you are upset right now, for example, please ask yourself, “Why am I upset right now?” Stop reading if you can’t come up with an answer that doesn’t allow you to keep reading without emotions like rage or deep and utter disappointment. Once you get there, keep reading.

Anyway, I was a secret theistic evolutionist. Then the youth group started asking uncomfortable questions, like, “What about the dinosaurs?” So, I figured I had to come clean, and tackle the question with them. And now, here I am talking about it on the blogosphere. Keep an open mind blogosphere, and hear me out!

Who Cares?
I don’t know this from personal experience, necessarily, but I know there are some people who would say, “Why even bother with the question?” From a faith standpoint, what you believe about evolution doesn’t necessarily affect whether you are a Christian or not, so why bother even broaching the topic?

I think it’s important for a couple of reasons. One is that God gave us brains, and if we have the capability to understand something (like the Bible, or the origin of the universe, or the world around us), we have a responsibility to try and do so.

Here’s another one, as presented by our friend St. Augustine:
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show a vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books and matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience in the light of reason?”

Augustine said this in the 4th century. I think it still applies today. For example, I had a next-door neighbor who was a Ph.D. student in neuroscience. He couldn’t fathom why anyone wouldn’t believe in evolution when, in his estimation, he could literally see its results everyday in the lab. From his perspective, if Christians couldn’t believe what he could see with his own eyes, why should he believe what Christians proclaim that couldn’t be seen?

One of the things that makes the discussion of evolution convoluted is the fear of hidden agendas. So let me be frank: my agenda is to get people to meet Jesus, and to receive salvation from Him. The current state of discussion on evolution in our country is more often than not an obstacle to getting people to meet Jesus. In looking for a way forward, I found out that the debate wasn’t as simple as evolution vs. creationism. There was another way. I found it best expressed in Francis Collins’ book “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.” Collins is one of the world’s most distinguished scientists – the former head of the Human Genome Project, and a researcher in gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. He is also an adult convert to Christianity. In the book he takes on the difficult task of defending faith to scientists, defending evolution to Christians, and portraying a middle way. And he manages to do it in less than 300 pages. Not bad. A lot of this entry, including the Augustine quote above, comes from things in his book.

The last reason to talk about evolution is the circumstance I mentioned above. People like me who have jobs that require them to 1) read the Bible, and 2) teach people stuff, need to have answers to questions like, “What about the dinosaurs?” I want to make sure I have clear (if not concise) answers to their questions.

"What about me?!"


On Evolution
I started with the youth by setting out the options – the things people believe about the origin of the universe, and of humanity in particular. Creationism, Evolution, Theistic Evolution. I asked them why scientists believe in evolution. Their answer: “Because they hate God!”

I think they were telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. But, in case you believe the same, I can tell you with fairly good confidence that “hating God” is not the reason most scientists believe in evolution. The reason they believe it is that (so far) it is the best explanation that has been proposed for the origin of the variety of biological life we see around us. The preponderance of evidence is pretty convincing to a lot of people, especially when you consider genetic evidence (something I won’t even attempt to summarize here).

Further debunking the “scientists hate God” belief is the fact that there are a lot of scientists like Francis Collins, who believe in God and in evolution. Collins’ cites the following survey - in 1916 a sampling of biologists, physicists, and mathematicians were asked whether they believed in a God who actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray in the expectation of receiving an answer. 40% of those polled said yes. In 1997 the survey was repeated, and this time, the percentage was ---- 40%.

The belief that evolution is part of a secular materialist agenda on the part of scientists to eradicate the belief in God is simply not true. Certainly, there are noteworthy examples of this kind of agenda, but they in no way speak for the majority of scientists.

If you are one of the people who thinks Darwin ruined the world, it’s probably because you think that he started the secular materialist agenda, and that a necessary result of accepting evolution then became rejecting faith entirely. I don’t think history bears this out. In fact, I think it is more likely that hard-line Christian rejection of evolutionary theory since the time of Darwin has led people like my former neighbor into the arms of whatever secular materialist agenda actually exists. In other words, it wasn’t evolution or the enlightenment that brought belief in God crashing down, as much as it has been the inability of the church to engage the enlightenment and reasonably discuss evolutionary theory that leads people to see faith as backward and outdated.

As a historical precedent, consider the sad case of Galileo. The church of the day said his belief that the earth revolves around the sun was blasphemous and would lead to widespread apostasy. The Bible very clearly states that “the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.” (Psalm 93:1) This was a strange place to draw the line, frankly, and these days everyone admits that the church was wrong, and Galileo was right. But the issue for the church at that time revolved around (ba dum bum!) biblical interpretation, which we’ll get to in a second.


"I can't get no respect!" - Galileo

First though, in case you feel like Christian acceptance of evolutionary theory is new, let’s hear from some old Christians:

“For long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed in this state for ages before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and its physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say, "I" and "me", which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past. We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could be gods.” – C.S. Lewis

“If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly - especially if, like the Christian God, He were outside time.” – G.K. Chesterton

Let me venture one more word on this sub-topic, to clear up a common misunderstanding about evolution. There are two definitions for the word “theory.”

1. a speculative or conjectural view of something; ex. I have a theory that peanut butter and chocolate taste great together.

2. fundamental principles underlying a science, art, etc.: i.e. music theory, theory of equations

When science-types use the term “theory of evolution,” they mean definition #2. Francis Collins again, “The primary utility of a theory is not just to look back but to look forward. A viable scientific theory predicts other findings and suggests approaches for further experimental verification.” That’s why scientists like the theory of evolution.

On Genesis
If you know me or read the blog regularly, you know I take the Bible and my faith very seriously. And when it came to evolution, the big bang theory, etc., I, like many evangelicals had a hard time reconciling this with what I believe God has revealed in the Old Testament.

The pro-Biblical, anti-evolution part of the argument usually starts with, “If you don’t believe part of the Bible, how can you believe any of the Bible?” It may also include the sentiment, “God wouldn’t lie to me.”

I whole-heartedly agree that the entire Bible is to be believed, and that God wouldn’t lie to us. I think the issue here is one of interpretation.

Let’s start with the verse poor Galileo had to contend with as an example. “The world is firmly established, it shall not be moved.” There are two ways to interpret this verse:
1)The earth is the literal center of the universe and does not move at all
2)This is a poetic representation of God’s sovereignty over creation

I think there’s pretty good evidence for option 2 because:

1)Scientific evidence shows that the earth is not the center of the universe and does move quite a bit

2)That verse is in a poem

So, if I believe option 2, I still believe the Bible to be true, and that God Has not lied to me, I just interpret the verse differently, based on the context and its original intent.

Now, here are our options for Genesis chapters 1-3, the passages that most directly impact the evolution debate:

1)God created the earth in six days (with some interpretive leeway here), and all the species on earth separately according to their kinds, including humans

2)This is a poetic representation of God’s purposeful action in creating the universe, and His special relationship with human beings

Some indicators for a poetic reading of Genesis 1-3:

1)The pattern in chapter 1
-Day 1 – Light - Day 4 – Sun/Moon/Stars
-Day 2 – Sky/Water - Day 5 – Birds/Fish
-Day 3 – Ground/Plants - Day 6 – Animals/Humans

2)The content of chapters 2 and 3
-A tree whose fruit grants eternal life
-A tree whose fruit grants the knowledge of good and evil
-A talking snake (not portrayed in the story itself as demonic)
-A moral rule given to people who, according to the story, do not know the difference between good and evil
-A different sequence of events for creation than in chapter 1
-No historical context for this story – its setting is before any recorded history

This idea may be way, way foreign to some of you, and it freaked me out real bad the first time I heard it, too. Here’s how I learned to relax – there are other parts of the Bible that tell us the truth without giving us a literal sequence of events. Psalms, a huge portion of the Prophets, even the parables of Jesus are all “true” without being literal because they teach us true things about ourselves and about God. What if Genesis 1-3 falls into that category?

Here are some true things we can learn from a poetic reading of Genesis:
-God created everything, He did it on purpose, and He did it from nothing
-Humans are unique creations of God, able to interact with Him in a way unlike any other creature, and able to participate in creation themselves
-Humans have a responsibility to care for creation
-The relationship of humans with the world, with God, and with each other used to better and we (humans) screwed it up
-God sets the boundaries of good and evil
-God provides the covering for our shame when we overstep the boundaries
None of those truths depend on a literal reading of Genesis. None of those truths are incompatible with the currently accepted scientific theory of how the universe began or how life on earth began and has culminated in humanity.

I don’t think God lied to us, and don’t think God gave us an account of creation to confuse us. I think He gave us a story of creation that told us the truth about Himself, the world, our place in it, and our relationship with Him, in a way no other kind of story could. There isn’t a good word in English for this kind of literature. If we call it the same thing we call non-Biblical creation stories – a myth – that insinuates that it is untrue. One of the synonyms for “myth” is “falsehood.” But as we have seen, even if read non-literally, it teaches us things that are true. It’s truth does not depend on being a literal record of sequential events. It’s a lot more like Revelation than Ruth, in other words. This is not a new approach to this scripture – ancient Hebrew commentators have a wide variety of interpretations of these passages, many of them non-literal.

Augustine again: “In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”

I think the power of the story is illustrated in that, whatever logical objections could be raised to a literal reading of the story, no one ever says, “Well that doesn’t sound like humans at all!” It resonates because it sounds exactly like what we ourselves would do in such a situation – be given a Paradise to live in, get one rule – just one! – break the one rule, and then blame your spouse.

The power of the truth of the story stands out even more when you compare Genesis’ “First Story” to other creation accounts from other cultures. Almost any other origin story features gods and goddesses fighting monsters or each other, having sex with one another, or both. The violence and lust of humanity is projected into the heavens in Greek, Babylonian, Egyptian, and even Chinese stories of creation. Often humans are created as a sort of afterthought to serve the gods. But the Hebrew story is about a God who creates everything from nothing – like a musician, a poet, an artist. He doesn’t need to fight primordial dragons or have a divine consort. He creates, and it is good. And his triumphant creation, humanity, is created not to serve Him, but to live in His image, and commune with Him. Quite a different kind of story.

The objection to this kind of interpretation is often raised, “If you don’t take the first chapters of the Bible at their word, how can we know what we are supposed to take literally or not?” I think the context of Biblical writings makes that clear. The story of Abraham, or Moses, or David, and especially Jesus, are tied by their writers to specific times and places, to other notable historical figures, and are clearly intended to be historical accounts. We know the life of Jesus isn’t an allegory because of the way his story is written. I think the “First Story” in Genesis, though, has all the hallmarks of being a different kind of literature. It is not and was not intended to be the final word on astronomy, biology, genetics, and anthropology. It always was intended to be the first word on theology.

Someone once asked me, “Why are you trying to apply evolution to the Bible?” The answer is, I’m not. I’m trying to apply the Bible to the world. Currently, most of the educated world (except America) overwhelmingly accepts the theory of evolution. There are plenty of other places where the Bible stands in judgment over the popular theories of the world, but I don't think the process of creation is one of those places, and we do ourselves and people who are not believers a disservice by trying to fight a battle we don't have to fight.

Why Can’t We Talk Without Yelling?
Some Christians believe evolution is a bunch of hooey. Some believe in a literal 6 day creation, a 6000 year old earth, etc. Some Christians believe God created the universe and all life on earth, and He used evolution and genetics to do it.

Both groups are made up of people who love Jesus and want other people to meet Him. There is no reason the conversation between Christians should be as shrill as it has been, and especially no reason the conversation between Christians and non-believers should be as contentious as it has.

You have every right to disagree with me, just as I have the right to disagree with you. Neither of us, however, have the right to bash each other. Just make sure that if you disagree with me, you do so for good reason, and you do so in love. If you have read this far, you deserve a special award. Go get yourself a Dr. Pepper!

The Christmas Cave

We’ve gotten very attached to some ideas about the birth of Jesus that are suppositions. One is that Jesus was born in a stable. In fact, Luke says Mary laid in him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Where that manger was is not mentioned. The oldest Christian tradition portrays the nativity has occurring in a cave. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built on the supposed site of Jesus’ birth, is mostly underground. And caves are still used to keep animals in Israel today. To be born in a stable is interesting enough. G.K. Chesterton finds something more in the idea of the Son of God being born in a cave.

"It was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. Nevertheless it is true that the cave has not been so commonly or so clearly used as a symbol as the other realities that surrounded the first Christmas. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born.

Whether as a myth or a mystery, Christ was obviously conceived as born in a hole in the rocks primarily because it marked the position of one outcast and homeless. Christ was not only born on the level of the world, but even lower than the world. The first act of the divine drama was enacted, not only on no stage set up above the sight-seer, but on a dark and curtained stage sunken out of sight. In the riddle of Bethlehem, it was heaven that was under the earth.

There is in that alone the touch of a revolution, as of the world turned upside down. It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves."

Mother and Child

An interesting passage from your friend and mine, G.K. Chesterton. First, a little context– by the time he wrote “The Everlasting Man,” from which the following is taken, he had fully converted to Catholicism.

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“If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect; the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin.

When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon.

But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all around that of a new-born child. You can not suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a new-born child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a new-born child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother; you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the halos not to mingle and cross.”

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As a Baptist from birth (BFB) I didn’t hear much about The Blessed Virgin growing up, and was rather mystified by the Catholic approach to her. I am not ready to address prayers to Mary, but I think Chesterton has a point in that if we are going to think of Jesus as a baby, and stand in awe at everything such an idea means for us, we have to recognize the completely unique place his mother holds in salvation history.

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor - Christmas

Caravaggio's "Adoration of the Shepherds"

An excerpt from G.K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man," from the chapter "The God in the Cave."

"A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.

Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a Christmas has ever afterward, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be the savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God.

Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet.

It might be suggested, in a somewhat violent image, that nothing had happened in that fold or crack in the great gray hills except that the whole universe had been turned inside out. I mean that all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were now turned inward to the smallest.

The faith becomes, in more ways than one, a religion of little things."

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor - Mo' Money, Mo' Problems

"Bow before me, and I shall grant your heart's desires!!"

In these difficult financial times, many of us find ourselves thinking about money. We may even find ourselves thinking about how we think about money. We’ll call it “Economic Epistemology.” I realize it’s election season, but when public figures start using moral words like “greed,” you know things are going badly.

Public figures have also been using the word “socialism,” a lot. One party has used the term more than the other, but both have used it to insult the other.

And a few days ago I had a startling revelation. People accuse each other of socialism when they propose to use government money (which is really public money) to benefit people who are not like them.

It works like this:
If you offer to give tax cuts to the lower and middle classes, Republicans cry “socialism!” They do this because they are rich, and would like the government to help them stay that way. And a good way to do that is to keep other people from getting any.

If you offer corporate bailouts and tax cuts to corporations, Democrats cry “socialism!” They do this because they would like to be rich, and for the government to help them get that way. And a good way to do that is to take money from people who already have a bunch.

Am I way off?

Anyway, enough incendiary talk from me. Here’s some incendiary talk from our friend G.K. Chesterton on democracy, the doctrine of human sinfulness, and the corrupting power of wealth:

“If clean homes and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the present at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air? If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia.

Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity.
Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest -- if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this -- that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable.

You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may consistently say, "I respect that man's rank, although he takes bribes." But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast, "a man of that rank would not take bribes." For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history.

In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.”

Preach on brother!

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor - The Title in Context

The title of my blog obviously comes from the quote beneath it, which comes from Orthodoxy, Chesterton's "slovenly biography," - his attempt to explain his personal philosophy, how he rejected the Christianity of his youth, subsequently rejected the current philosophies of his day, and found Christianity again standing in answer to them all.

The quote above comes from chapter six - "The Paradoxes of Christianity." Chesterton describes how one of the things that most intrigued him about Christianity later in life was how it was accused of opposite things at the same time. It was accused of being the mother of all wars, and of encouraging some people to ridiculous levels of pacifism. It was accused of making people too pessimistic, and making people too optimistic.

"This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman's intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman's intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that "only women" went to it."

He confesses that this led him at first to the conclusion, not that Christianity was true, but that it was exceedingly strange.

"An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist."

It was the consideration of the Christian approach to virtue that ultimately fostered a new appreciation in Chesterton. Its conception of courage which could condemn the suicide and glorify the martyr, its conception of humility vs. pride that meant, "One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul."

And then:
"Take another case: the complicated question of charity, which some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy. Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things -- pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves (as we did in the case of pride) what a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn't: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. In so far as the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild."

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor

This is going to be little long, but it is one of my favorite things in the world, so...

From chapter 4 of Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton, "The Ethics of Elfland." He talks about the convictions about the world built in him by the first stories he heard - fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

"I have explained that the fairy tales rounded in me two convictions; first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden and spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which, crude as they were, have since hardened into convictions.

First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been done.

But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before. In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure.

The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."

He ends the chapter thusly:

"Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt before I could think: that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that world does not explain itself. It may be miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false.

Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently.

Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons.

Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us.

And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it."

How To Name a Blog

Well, hello there, blogosphere. I've been a fan of yours for a while, and now you and I are as one.

Thanks to Taylor Sandlin and Danielle Day, who encouraged me to come here, as did Craig Nash, simply because he has a great blog.

I would have been here sooner except for this very sage advice from Dani - "Here come's the tricky part. Picking a blog name. Search your soul Patrick and come up with something that really has pizazz. Then you have to hope that it's not taken."

So I did. I searched my soul. I used my wife as a sounding board since she has a good ear for good ideas and a personal stake in how I present myself to the world, and tried to come up with something with pizazz.

My first instinct was "St. Patrick's Confessional." But I thought that made me sound too holy, or least that I was under the impression that I was holy. Jeni vetoed that outright, as well.

My second instinct was "Musings." I liked that it could comfortably cover a wide variety of subjects. I did not like that it made me sound like a 16 year-old girl.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was the idea "The Masked Hippo." The Masked Hippo is a cartoon character who has been in my head and scribbled on the edges of notebooks for a good while now. When I write my long-delayed children's book, the Masked Hippo will feature prominently. But I was vetoed again when my wife informed me that it made me sound like a teenage boy.

Then came "Questions, Comments, Snide Remarks." I use this one a lot at the end of youth Bible study lessons. Jeni's opinion was: too common.

Then, as has happened a lot lately, G.K. Chesterton came to my rescue. I realize I am co-opting someone else's phrase - but, man, I really love that phrase. I said it, and a smile crept over my wife's face, and she said, "Yeah, that's good."

It's lack of origin in my own head is its only disadvantage. It has the distinct advantage of letting me cover any number of topics as long as they fit under the broad category of "good" - I can treat good things reverently and so keep them good, and possibly even treat bad things irreverently in the name of good. We'll see.

Come back soon for "The Chronicles of Shamgar," and the ongoing series "Bible Verses That Freak Me Out." And don't be shy - please comment away.

~ Patrick