Power: You can't please people with its use, you can't please people without its use.

Ask anybody what they wouldn't do for a million euros or dollars, and they will give you a very short list of things. This list will include all the extreme things one can imagine-exposure to radioactive substances, brain surgery, Chinese water torture, etc. However, its a well documented fact that when people win large sums of money in lotteries, a high percentage become quite adept at destroying their lives. And, we can imagine the pressures that suddenly come upon them. Rags to riches sports figures also experience this pressure. Everyone around them expects to benefit from their good fortunes or, in the case of people further removed from them, expects them to create world peace with their millions. If they put their money into a mutual fund, a savings account or the stock market, no one is happy. If they give to a charity, some complain about their choice. If they give some to one family member, others expect just as much.
Power like money, is no simple blessing-be careful what you wish for! The United States faces a similar issue as the rags to riches sportsman. It has found itself, once poor, inconsequential upstart nation, on top of the world. What shall it do now? The imperial urge is often quite innocent. Not only might you want to help the world with your new power, you are in fact expected to! There is a kind of necessity involved, as Thucydides' seems to imply about imperial Athens. One might see the same sort of irresistible impulse in the Roman and British empires, as well as other historical empires.
It reveals some root expectations in the nature of human beings-even people who claim there exists no such thing as a "natural law" or "eternal moral order". We expect those with power to use it for the benefit of others, even though we suspect they will use it selfishly. Just as we might expect a beautiful woman to be gentle and innocent, even though we suspect she might be manipulative. You can't win in the realm of public opinion, when you have power. All you can do is take your risks and dare-dare to make a better world.

People are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose.

As a general rule, PEOPLE,
even the wicked,
ARE MUCH MORE NAÏVE AND SIMPLE-HEARTED THAN WE SUPPOSE.
And we ourselves are, too.

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The Urban Touch

It is a cold intimacy, brushing shoulders and avoiding sustained eye contact. Where can you find meaningful touch amid all these people? The routine handshakes and warm embraces of friends in village life is not often found in the urgent motion of urban life.
Touch comes in different forms. A seductive stare from the 2D image of a stylish blond. A courteous warning from a warm masculine voice, "Stand back, the subway doors are closing." This is the urban touch. And so hearts of men and women are stacked upon one another, but with no mortor of meaningful touch to bind them together.

The Idea For Which I Can Live and Die

“What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth, of working through all the systems of philosophy and being able, if required, to review them all and show up the inconsistencies of each system; - what good would it do me to be able to develop a theory of the state and combine all the details into a single whole, and so construct a world in which I did not live, but only held up to the view of others; - what good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no deeper significance for me and for my life; - what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of understanding and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing.”
Kierkegaard, The Journals

What Shall Become of This Race?

What shall become of this Race, my King? What can be done with us?
What more can be done for us than you have already done?

In this world between worlds, I now have a love-hate relationship with this Race, and with your coming judgment upon it. Your Name and all my hopes that are attached to it demand that this Race be called to accounts...these creatures claiming to be “self-made”.
My heart longs for this race which still bears your finger prints! My own heart and soul, sculpted with lines and curvatures of your craftsmanship.

A King who was smote down upon a hill...no resistance given your enemy. This Race, which you now hunt and pursue, has become the resister...desperate to carve an image of their own imagination upon their lives—Your voice unheeded in the desperate noise of hammer and chisel. No attempts to discover the maker of selves.

Unbeknownst to them, this self-obsessed Race is constantly disfiguring itself. Not self-made, rather self-mutilators. How dare I sit in judgment upon Adam & Eve’s sons, their daughters? Yet the disease resides in me—even with my allegiance vowed to the King, still I’m capable of self-destruction. Not just capable of notable life-wrecking—shattering my marriage, family, friendships, vocation—but, also the unnoticed, insidious versions. No escaping it, I’m still tied to this Race of self-destroying men (and women). In my heart still lies the capacity for self-making—and not just the capacity. I still lay hands on the hammer, I still strike blows—maybe I can just perform a little touch up here and there.

I still don’t get it either. You pursue the resisters—even though you could fell them with a breath of Your wrath. What do you wait upon? What will ever change about this Race? What can more time help? What can we hope for?
My love-hate relationship with judgment...longing for this madness to end. The madness inside me, the madness all around. Must I believe, must I hope, that still You wait, with patience, with a profound sense of hope—in this Race?!

You are a strange King indeed!

A night at the movies...

A new version of an old Hollywood theme...blood, guts, romance, deception, friendship/loyalty, twisted/distorted sexuality, glory
Daughters of Eve, Sons of Eve—what shall become of this race?
Longing to live a life worth dying for.
Why hoping for the seemingly hopeless?

On my way home...
12—midnight, few on the tram, couples and handfuls of late night folk about...
People looking for something, aimless, wandering...trying to make something meaningful out of just another Saturday night

A young man and a young woman...trying to figure out how to make things work, when it hasn’t ever worked before...drawn together, repulsed apart...string another “one night stand” together with countless previous ones?
Can we put up with the disappointments we give each other? What else is there?

God Wishes No Narrow Souls and Empty Heads

In the Christian religion God has revealed Himself, which means He has given man to understand what He is, and thus is no longer concealed and secret.
With this possibility of knowing God the obligation to know Him is imposed upon us.
God wishes no narrow souls and empty heads for his children;
He wishes our spirit, if itself indeed poor, rich in the knowledge of Him, and holding this knowledge to be of supreme value.

Hegel, Reason in History

Like Painting a Portrait

For you are no longer thinking simply about right and wrong; you are trying to catch the good infection from a Person. It is more like painting a portrait than like obeying a set of rules. And the odd thing is that while in one way it is much harder than keeping rules, in another way it is far easier.
CS Lewis, A Joyful Christian, 76.

Cure without Care

“What we see, and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care, the participation in the pain, the solidarity in suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness. And still, cure without care is as dehumanizing as a gift given with a cold heart.

“Our tendency is to run away from the painful realities or to try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators, and prevents a real community from taking shape. Cure without care makes us preoccupied with quick changes, impatient and unwilling to share each other’s burden. And so cure can often become offending instead of liberating.” (Pp. 31-32, 36-37)

Out of Solitude
Henri Nouwen

Making People Think

But we must not always exhaust a subject, so as to leave no work at all for the reader. My business is not to make people read, but to make them think.
Montesquieu, Book XI.20, Spirit of the Laws

Thomas Jefferson—Would he be Republican or Democrat in today's USA?

Letter to James Madison from Paris, Dec. 20, 1787
"I own, I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors (politicians) indeed more at their ease, at the expense of the people."

Letter to Col. William S. Smith, from Paris, Dec 20 1787, on the need diligent protection of liberty…(consider what those wanting more bans on guns would say to this?)
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

First Annual Message, Dec. 8, 1801
Concerning taxes:
"…weighing all probabilities of expense, as well as income, there is reasonable ground of confidence that we may now safely dispense with all the internal taxes, comprehending excises, stamps, auctions, licenses, carriages, and refined sugars, to which the postage on newspapers may be added, to facilitate the progress of information, and that the remaining sources of revenue will be sufficient to provide for the support of government, to pay the interest on the public debts, and to discharge the principals in the shorter periods than the laws or the general expectations had contemplated. War, indeed, and untoward events, may change this prospect of things, and call for expenses which imposts could not meet; but sound principles will not justify our taxing the industry of our fellow citizens to accumulate treasure for wars to happen we know not when [or we could add, domestic needs or economic down turns, etc.], and which might not perhaps happen but from the temptations offered by that treasure."

Memory

Is it a lack of dilignece or intellectual laziness? The hard drive seems to constantly cycle out old information over a period of hours or days in place of new information. How can it be that I can write a 30 page paper on 10 verses and not readily be able to recall its contents? How can I intently study the history of Western philosophy one year and be unable to muster more than a handful of concepts and attach fewer authors to them? How can I get intently into the lives of men, their pasts, their struggles and victories, and yet fail to recall any details? How can I have read my Bible for 20+ years and fail to remember the location of critical passages or even the themes of major books?
Are some people cursed (or blessed) with a blank slate syndrome? I feel as if my mind is constantly being pierced by the thorn of forgetfulness. I could accopmlish so much more if only I could remember. Every day when I roll out of bed, I am plagued with the need to refresh my mind with what is spinning in my life, what are the current critical issues, who are the significant people with whom I need to relate. This process of fighting to remember seems to weary me, pulling on me like a ball and chain.
And so, I spend 20 minutes reading an encyclopedia here, and 15 minutes wandering on the internet pricing computer products- loving to learn random facts-and losing sight of my intentions, costing me productivity.
It seems to seep into every area of my life. My passion grows for missions, then for apologetics, then for college students. Can I remember which passions are my primary ones? Passion for people ebbs away after a few days seperated from a loved one. I fail recognize the existence of such people.

Is to forgetfulness equivalent to indifference? Some might argue with me that if I really cared, I’d remember. Can it be that I just care too little?

The Greatest Affliction—The Death of the Body or the Neglect of the Soul

6 people were killed today in fighting in the Middle East. A sixteen year old boy was shot to death outside his home. A hurricane took the lives of 11 people in the Caribbean. These are the headlines of our times. The ultimate evil is the loss of human life. The most honorable act is that which saves lives. I do not intent to undervalue the dignity of human life, but rather an attempt to magnify the human soul. The human body is sacred precisely because it houses a human soul made in the image of God. If the soul is not inherently valuable, or merely a figment of our imagination, why then is the human body of any more consequence, rather it is of even less.

Political thinkers of the last century have looked back with disgust and sharp criticism for a politics that concerns itself with the care of the soul—a politics that supported the oppression of the people by the state’s endorsement of mandated religions and superstitions. People’s freedom was stifled by a morality imposed on them from religious and government institutions. So, what has secular politics given us? It has given us only the care of the body. What are the consequences of a politics that provides limitless freedom for issues of the human soul? You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t harm anyone else’s body (thanks, Mill for this idea!).

When saving physical human life becomes the ultimate measure of human accomplishment, the human soul is neglected. So, we go about our lives trying to protect and cherish the human body at the expense of neglecting the soul. What, after all, is life all about? If it is a matter of keeping human bodies safe from harm, we might as well create a political order out of the mold of Orwell’s 1984. There are much more efficient ways of keeping human bodies from suffering illness or harm. Which is what it seems that the “civilized” West is attempting to do to varying degrees at the outset of the 21st century. The only thing worth dying for is the saving of another person’s physical life.

The consequence of this paradigm extends into every aspect of our lives. Concerned primarily or only with protecting physical human bodies, we may neglect the human soul.

Post-Christian Culture, The Christian Message, and Authority

Much has been made, which I have largely supported, that the message of Christ is more effectively communicated through the medium of the love that non-believers can see in the body of Christ—flawed and sinful followers of Christ learning to love one another and the world. What I’ve recently been confronted with is that while this may be the most attractive medium for the good news of Jesus to be spread, the fact is that the good news is inherently a message involving AUTHORITY.

I’ve come across two articles recently that have made me think more about this (1) an interview with John Stott in Christianity Today’s 50 Year Anniversary issue and (2) an article by Tim Keller called “Destructing Defeater Beliefs”.

Both of these men admit that a community of Christians learning to love well is a critical component for post-modern evangelism:

“People say [its] wonderful [that Christ made the invisible God visible], but that was 2,000 years ago. So in 1 John 4:12, he begins with exactly the same formula, nobody has ever seen God. But here John goes on, ‘If we love one another, God abides in us.’ The same invisible God who once made himself visible in Jesus now makes himself visible in the Christian community, if we love one another. And all the verbal proclamation of the gospel is of little value unless it is made by a community of love.” John Stott

“Many books on reaching post-moderns today give the impression that people now need virtually no arguments at all. The 'apologetic' is a loving community, or the embodiment of social concern. I couldn't agree more that post-modern people come to Christ through process, through relationships, though mini-decisions, through 'trying Christianity on'.” Tim Keller

However, authority is an issue that cannot be overlooked, and will remain a challenging barrier for all who come to Christ (as it is still for those of us in the “hard knocks” school of walking with Christ). In other words, even though authentic Christian community marked by love can be attractive to people, any who claims to follow this Savior, the Lamb who was slain, will ultimately run up against the
rock hard wall of the Lion of David demanding their allegiance. The Christian life is not only entrance into an embracing, empathetic, and forgiving community, but a vow of allegiance to a very unpredictable (from our point of view) Absolute Sovereign, a King who demands that we sign every asset we think we own, including our time, money, future, etc., over to Him.

When I teach my students about Political Philosophy, I point out to them that there are fundamentally two kinds of political philosophers. Those who believe that there is a Truth that governs the universe, to which we would do well to pay attention when we structure our political societies and those who discard such a possibility. From the latter perspective, the former is a closed view of the universe while theirs is an open one.

Essentially what is being said by thinkers like Nietzsche, Foucault and others, is that we humans should not confine ourselves within an unchanging view of the universe, but pursue infinite possibilities with our creative talents. While this sounds quite liberating, if there is a Truth in the universe, it is quite foolish. Perhaps it is appealing just because of our inherent desire to avoid the issue of Authority “like the plague”. It provides people with a very attractive and seemingly reasonable approach to life. It seems a compelling rationale for discarding the older, worn out, and oppressive views of the past (i.e., Christianity).

For people living with such post-Christian views, a genuinely caring community of Christians can be attractive. After all, as a liberated individual, I do not have to buy into all the non-sense about “Christ is the ONLY way” to appreciate the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings and enjoy the camaraderie of Christian community. But, at some point, if I am truly to walk with Christ, I will have to face the reality that this faith is not merely a place to belong, like finding my own version of the TV show “Friends”. In other words, I cannot become a Christian on my own terms. Jesus leaves no such option available. As Keller discusses, I am not the Authority the defines my faith, rather, Christ will demand that He is the Authority that defines my faith:

“What then of the claim that 'post-modern people don't want arguments – they just want to see if it works for them'? All right – as with any form of contextualization, let us as evangelists enter – adapt partially – to the culture of expressive individualism. Let us show them the reality of changed lives. Let us use narratives rather than long strings of logic. But at some point you must also challenge the sovereignty of individual consciousness. Jesus is Lord, not my personal consciousness. At some point, the idea that "it is true if and only if it works for me" must be challenged.” Tim Keller

This is not only true for those examining the Christian message. We too, as followers of Christ, must recognize that it is far too easy to fall into the trap that we define our own personal version of Christianity. Jesus will consistently confront us when we do so, if we are paying attention, and will consistently demand our allegiance. What we must remember, however, is that while our Savior is an “untame Lion” who does not fall under our control nor always lead us on easy paths, He is good...