the musings and meditations of a sojourning mendicant...

Welcome Back and Welcome Home

2007-01-13T14:09:00.000-05:00

I've spent a lot of Christmas break with my new equipment (an upcoming post will highlight my rig, for all of you audio geeks). Because of my illness, I was unable to record nearly as much as I had hoped. Here are two teaser tracks. The first is fairly close to being done, in the sense of having final tracks and decent effects. Obviously, there will be more singing and more verses/chorus and a bridge.

The second song is closest and dear to my heart. Most of you are familiar with it as well, as I've performed it live on many occasions. I recorded all of these tracks today and sang through my illness. But boy are the falsetto vocals off on the late "thought" in the song. A lot of the audio files will be re-recorded... but... I thought I'd give you a little taste of what is to come. Enjoy.

I Don't Suppose

Pennsylvania Skies

Yeah... I'm Advertising.

2007-01-10T16:04:00.000-05:00

I have gone more than a month without posting for several reasons. Most of the items I baked during Thanksgiving and Christmas were repeats. So the pictures were not worth posting. Also, most of my time has been spent writing and recording songs, so I do not get around to baking very often anymore.

Though my posts are historically personal or related to my music or baking, I'm going to break out of the mold for a few posts and shamelessly advertise my personal bests of 2006/2007.

How to go to M.I.T. for free

The OpenCourseWare movement allows you to access syllabi, lectures, reading material, etc. from hundreds of courses at M.I.T. Even better, it's spread to Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, and dozens of other U.S. and international universities. I've "taken" a few courses at both M.I.T. and Notre Dame thus far. Once Notre Dame gets more philosophy courses online, I'll be digging in a bit deeper (though their Intro. to Philosophy courses would be great for any of you that have not read much philosophy). M.I.T. has one of the best philosophy departments, if linguistic philosophy, logic, positivism, the philosophy of science, etc. float your boat. I have also begun to take several courses in M.I.T's music/theater department. Fascinating stuff. A bit more edifying and profitable than browsing YouTube or ESPN. Check it out for yourself; hundreds of courses are being added each semester.

Fogo de Chao

As most of you know, I am a lover of food. And when the quantity vs. quality debate ensues, I'm inclined to defend quantity, so long as the quality is above a certain level. Give me three Chipotle burritos and you can have your stupid little piece of fish on a bed of over-priced vegetables.

But what if you could have both? I can say without reservation that Fogo de Chao is the best restaurant I have ever experienced. And experienced is exactly the right word. The restaurant caters to all of your senses, not just your taste buds. We might as well start with taste, though.

Fogo de Chao features all-you-can-eat Brazilian meats, side dishes and a salad bar. The meats range from beef ancho to picanha to filet mignon to lamb chops to pork tenderloin to sausage to chicken drumsticks to pork and beef ribs. I believe there are about 16 different cuts of meat. Typically, you sacrifice quality at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. This is NOT the case with Fogo de Chao. I tried all of the meats except for the pork tenderloin. Each meat was the best I had ever tasted. Near the end of the meal, I realized there were no condiments and I had not touched the pepper shaker. Typically, I load up my plate with hot sauces, horseradish, ketchup, pepper, etc. Not a single meat required the addition of any kind of condiment.

Rather than ordering a certain cut of meat, there are waiters assigned to each type of meat. They sprint around the restaurant and cut you freshly cooked, sizzling pieces of succulent, heavenly meat. You can get everything from rare to well-done meat and I did not experience a single cold or even lukewarm bite. A single cut of one of the meats would cost 20+ bucks at a steakhouse. I consumed about five pounds (I prepared myself by eating nothing but lettuce for several days; according to eating contest participants, it stretches your stomach due to its high content of water, but contains almost no calories. It paid off).

The salad bar is equally amazing. I honestly could not identify half the items, but I believe I had artichoke hearts, several Brazilian cheeses, hot peppers, asparagus, some pickled meats and several other unidentified but tasty side items. The cheeses were exceptional; again, the best I had ever tasted. At your table, the waiters constantly bring out fresh side dishes of seasoned mashed potatoes (incredible), fried plantains (I've tried these in central America and don't like them, so I didn't taste the ones at Fogo de Chao), a strange kind of roll that tasted as though it contained egg whites and a fried cornbread of sorts. No butter. Again, wholly unnecessary.

My water was refilled about 18 times throughout the course of the meal. Darin and I were in the back corner of restaurant. Neither the salad bar or kitchen were visible from our seats. Yet Darin counted on several occasions the number of seconds that expired without a crazy Brazilian cutting meat in our vicinity. He once got to twelve seconds.

The wine and alcohol selection looked superb (I'm largely ignorant of everything except beer). More than a thousand wine bottles line the walls, extending from the floor to the ceiling (probably more than 20 feet). The atmosphere is quite noisy for a fancy restaurant, thanks to the constant interaction between the diners and the Brazilian meat-cutters.

Our meal lasted close to three hours; we were constantly waited upon but never rushed. We estimated that about twenty-five different men and women served us throughout the course of the night. Each one was constantly smiling and there were no mistakes, spills, etc. Clean plates, drinks, and side dishes appeared constantly; most of the time, we were not even aware of their presence until a waiter had already moved on to another table.

I know very little about heaven, but I imagine the room being prepared for me resembles quite closely a Fogo de Chao restaurant. After we finished, Darin and I felt like personally congratulating each of the waiters. It was more than a dining experience; it was a performance.

Amazingly, I scored a free dinner for two (the restaurant in Philadelphia very recently). Our bill would have been about 100 dollars. The price for lunch is around 25 dollars per person, however, so I expect to be returning. For all you meat-loving men, this restaurant is paradise. I doubt I'll ever find a better dining experience. Even the bathrooms are spectacular. The sinks look as though they are hand-thrown clay, with concentric ridges rising up the bowl.

The night was not, however, without its tragic moments. Darin and I have often been jokingly referred to as a gay couple. This has also occurred not-so-jokingly at our old gym and perhaps in other public places. Thanks to the dazed looks of amazement and silly grins on our faces (due to the ridiculous nature of the restaurant, NOT the person sitting across from us), several waiters presumed we were a couple. When one of the managers asked where we were from, Darin did not help our case by replying for the both of us "We live in Hershey. I teach and Dan is still a student."

Later, Darin ordered a strawberry cream dessert. It arrived on a froofy place-mat. The waiter looked at him with a glint in his eye, and asked with his marvelous Portuguese accent, "You like another spoon??"

But I'd be willing to undergo far worse to enjoy another night in the restaurant. They have a number of locations in the US and several restaurants in Brazil. Go. You won't be sorry.

The iPhone

So far, I've described exemplary opportunities to indulge two of my interests that should surprise none of you: learning and eating.

This last advertisement might take you by surprise. As most of you know, I have opposed cell phones since high school. While I only occasionally deride owners of cell phones, I made it my personal goal to never own one of the silly devices during college. I succeeded. Recently, I began to use a track phone. This was not my choice; my parents secretly bought it for me after a moron rear-ended my Civic with his Ford Excursion during a snowstorm. I am willing to concede the usefulness of a mobile communication device under such circumstances.

Come June 2007, however, I may join the other 99.9999% of Americans and buy a real cell phone. Or should I say an iPhone. This baby runs OSX and seamlessly integrates the features of an iPod, PDA, cell phone, GPS and more. I'll let you peruse Apple's presentation of the phone, since they present it (as always) in a stream-lined and beautiful manner. Finally, a cell phone worthy of Daniel "the Legend" Kearns. I'm sure my friends at Case will strip me of my title. But it just might be worth it.

As mentioned previously, I've been doing a lot of recording lately. Thanks to a week-long illness, I can't sing right now. But I'll be posting several unfinished songs (shocking, I know) in the next week or so. Since a lot of you have been asking about my latest equipment, I'll also post some pictures of my studio. Let's just say I'm like a pig in a pile of slop. This analogy is accurate on so many levels.

More updates coming soon. Sorry for the long period of silence.

Some more baking pictures

2006-11-27T00:50:00.000-05:00

Partusch says his life is falling apart, because I haven't posted in awhile. I've made a quite a few items during the past couple weeks, but I forgot to take pictures of many of them. Thanksgiving was a success, though. I made a cranberry sauce from real cranberries as well as dried cherries, cloves, cinnamon sticks, etc. I also mashed some red-skinned potatoes with some chives, butter and garlic... and it was an instant hit. Other than that, it was pretty standard Thanksgiving fare.

I made a pumpkin-pecan pie the other week. The pictures don't really reveal the "pumpkin" part of the pie, but it was essentially a two layer pie with pumpkin on the bottom and a caramelized pecan filling on the top. I actually tried this one... and it was quite good.

I made a cranberry coffee cake today and it was another hit with the Kairos Krew. Getting the cranberry jelly just right was the trickiest part. I was also pretty happy with the way the layering worked out.

Some old (but new to you!) pictures

2006-11-08T16:34:00.000-05:00

A number of weeks ago, I drove out to Cleveland to speak at Chi Alpha, hang out with my best bud Ben, talk with a number of leaders in different Christian groups, etc. Oh yes. And bake. And eat a lot of Chipotle. And drink a lot of Troeg's with Ben. Anyways, here are some of the goodies I baked: There's the 'La Bete Noire' (the black beast) which I kicked up a notch by using white chocolate and strawberries on top. I also made a blueberry upside-down cake and an orange marmalade crostata with toasted almonds. Yum. I think I made oatmeal date bars and cranberry biscotti as well, but don't have pictures of those. Sorry. Enjoy.

The baking goes on...

2006-11-05T20:08:00.000-05:00

This week, I baked a pine nut torta with marsala-poached apricots and prunes as well as a German chocolate cake. In a pan. With a coconut and pecan icing.

Coffee Shop Performance

2006-11-05T14:57:00.000-05:00

On Friday, I played at a coffee shop with Gretchen. We performed some originals and covers by the like of Johnny Cash, Mark Kozelek, Over the Rhine, Death Cab, Iron and Wine, David Wilcox, etc. I also played a set by myself, including one of my new favorite songs (I'll record it and post it up here sometime over Christmas break). Speaking of which... I'm selling the majority of my audio equipment right now (including Cassandra, my first love) and upgrading to a professional digital recording unit. Prepare for some awesome recordings over Christmas break. Anyways, here are some pictures from the coffee shop gig:

Pumpkin Carvings

2006-11-04T17:46:00.000-05:00

Although the Kearns family typically scoffs at holidays (and Halloween especially), this year we decided to carve ourselves some pumpkins. Keith's (my bro-in-law) parents are here for a few days, in addition to Steve-o, so we had quite the carving contest. Here are the pictures:

My pumpkin is not included in most of these group shots, because I spent far more time on my masterpiece than the rest of the family/in-laws. Very rarely will I brag about my visual artistic abilities, but I'm going to posit that this might be the greatest Jack-O-Lantern carved this year. Notice the curvature of the inside rind, such that you don't notice the thickness of the pumpkin as you look at the image. Notice how I thinned out the rind in certain places and scored some lines the entire way through the pumpkin and others merely on the surface to achieve a depth and range of colors foreign to most Jack-O-Lanterns. And most of all, notice the sheer amount of burnination. TROOOOGDOOOOOOR!!!!!

More Baking

2006-10-30T06:28:00.000-05:00

More baking this weekend. I'm told both recipes were quite tasty, though as usual, I didn't try either one.

Here's a chocolate hazlenut tart. Note to self: buy crushed graham crackers next time. You might feel like a more accomplished chef if you buy whole crackers and mash them yourself, but it takes about 20 minutes to get 1.5 cups. Pretty much pure chocolate and hazlenuts on the top layer, so the tart was very heavy. Almost all of my chocolate products have been flourless (or close to it).

This is an Autumn trifle with roasted apples, pears, and pumpkin-caramel sauce. You basically line the bowl with ladyfingers (brushed with sherry) and then layer the a cinnamon pastry cream, some roasted fruit, and the pumpkin-caramel sauce... then it's another layer of lady fingers followed by the cream, apples, and sauce. I got some pastry bags from the bakery at Giant and tried to apply some fresh whipped cream decoratively, also using thin pear slices to add a bit of flair. You have to utterly destroy the trifle to eat it, though, which is a bit tragic.

Baking Extravaganza

2006-10-22T21:51:00.000-04:00

So I told you this blog was reshaping itself to be an outlet for my music.

Times have changed.

My stupid microphone isn't working.

Owning a Mac with an Intel processor requires me to upgrade my software (75 bucks).

But I have been baking like a fool. So I thought I'd share my wares. You can't taste them over the internet, but you can feast your eyes on their scrum-diddly-umptiousness.

First off, a Chocolate Cranberry Torte. There's very little flour in this cake; mostly just butter, chocolate, cranberries and chambord (a French black raspbery liqueur). The torte/icing is whipping cream, chocolate, more cranberries and more chambord. And that just isn't enough liqueur, so I also made a glaze out of cranberries, sugar, chambord, etc. A few drops can be seen on the cake... I let folks drizzle the rest over their slices. It's a rich, heavy cake; you can probably get 16 slices or more out of the cake. I added mint leaves and dried cranberries for some flair.

Next up, an almond cream puff pastry with raspberry jam. Surpisingly, this turned out to be the hit item of the night. The pastry crumbled quite nicely in the mouth, and the almonds and raspberries combined for a sweet and tart tango in your mouth. OOoh yum.

Finally, I whippd up a Cranberry-Apple Ribbon Pie. I created two butter pie crusts. I placed the first in a pie pan and layered the bottom with a cranberry jelly. I put a mixture of Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples (peeled and cored) in addition to sugar, lemon juice, corn startch, flour, and cinnamon on top of the jelly. I draped the second pie crust on top, scored the edges, and cut out a steam vent. One hour later... voila!

Wake Me

2006-09-05T17:18:00.002-04:00

Dude. What a stupid drum beat.

Don't worry, I know.

And too much compression on the vocals.

But I actually think this might be one of my most promising songs. I'm going to try to add a (real) bass guitar and a few more tape echo-type guitar tracks. I like the interwoven sound thus far.

I also think the lyrics have potential, as they contain a lot more imagery than most of my songs. But I'm still working up some more verses and some changes to the existing structure...

Is the strummed guitar too much in the chorus? It seems to muddy things up, but I also like the effect. Maybe a mixing issue...

Lyrics:

Wake me from my slumber with your gaze of steel
On the broken glass of shattered dreams I guess I'll kneel
I never thought I'd get this far with you and me
And now it's time to go
This way
Cause I don't know (I'll probably change this line...)

Have you ever seen the moon wrestle with the sun
For it's precious birthright
Cause I've seen that fight
And I don't know if I can take it anymore (also being changed)
Have you ever seen the moon's beams
Startled by the break of day
Cause I've seen that way (also being changed)

To Be Honest

2006-09-05T17:18:00.001-04:00

I wrote this song while I was listening to the Arcade Fire a lot, but I didn't quite get the lo-fi sound they've got... so I'm actually thinking about running some of the orchestral sounds through a distortion box and making it 'dirtier' sounding.

I also noticed that I have a habit of writing long introductions with a bit of singing, then increasing the tempo/volume of songs. I'm not sure if I should do this all the time...

Lyrics:

To be honest, it's been quite awhile
Since I caught your face
In this old rundown town.
To be honest, I'm not growing younger
And it seemed much younger
When you were around.

I actually have some vocal tracks during the main part of the song, but they sound terrible, so they aren't included in this mix. I'm also planning on changing the effect during the intro... I was trying to be Elliot Smith, I think.

I meant to cut the guitar track short, but I guess it does give you an idea for the next chord progression.

Does the song work without a drum beat and just the occasional percussion, or should I put something in the background?

Snow

2006-09-05T17:18:00.000-04:00

An instrumental ditty that reminds me of Christmas. Part of my soundtrack/instrumental project.

Is the 'pulse' too strong, making it sound like a dopey march?

I don't want it to sound like a Hallmark commercial.

I've thought about adding a soft, distorted drum beat to the organ section... in more recent recordings, instruments fade back in and it builds up again... but as usual, the song isn't finished.

Let me know what you think.

Silent War

2006-09-05T17:17:00.003-04:00

I wrote most of this song during my last semester at Case. My early exit from college seemed to screw up some of my friendships, as a lot of folks felt as though there was still work for me to do with the parachurch ministries at Case... but I felt called elsewhere. There are more lyrics, but I have to find them...

I'm definitely changing the drumbeat... it's there as a metronome more than anything right now.

I haven't decided if I should keep the verses 'minimalist' with just a couple guitars, or if I should add a bunch more instruments. Right now, I'm leaning towards a 'Guster' feel, so I'll probably keep the instrument count low.

I'm a pretty big fan of the guitar interlude at the end, although I'm aware the very last electric guitar to enter the mix is a bit off. I haven't decided if the chorus should be singing overlaid on top of some of those tracks, or if I should have the instrumental break and then return to something simpler... comments?

Lyrics:

I thought that leaving would be harder than this;
Every time I say goodbye it feels like Judas' kiss.
I didn't come here thinking that I'd start a war;
But now it's looking like I'm not gonna sit here
And take it no more,
And I guess that you could that marks the end of a friendship
And the start of a silent war.

Bad Boy

2006-09-05T17:17:00.001-04:00

This is actually a cover of Mark Kozelek covering AC/DC! Ha!

I may throw in a few more guitars and some harmonies and touch up the vocals... but I posted this for kicks and giggles more than anything else. Hope you enjoy it.

Dark

2006-09-05T17:17:00.000-04:00

A little more industrial sounding than most of my music, eh? I've been fooling around with Propellerhead's Reason 3.0 this week.

I tried recording a few vocal tracks, but I think I need a girl a la Massive Attack/Bjork/Portishead to make it sound cool. I'll probably just develop it instrumentally and keep it as a "soundtrack" piece. It would probably be good slo-mo music for an action movie, right?

Again, thoughts/comments/critiques are welcome.

Almost

2006-09-05T17:15:00.001-04:00

I wrote this song last summer, after purchasing a guitar amp.

I sang some random lyrics for vocal effect ... the actual song will have "real" lyrics.

Is there enough of a transition between the intro and the verse? Does the drum beat work, or is it too happy?

At one point, I was a big fan of the rhythm guitar... but now I think it might be a little too loose and floppy-sounding.

Thoughts?

I Don't Suppose

2006-09-05T17:14:00.001-04:00

One of my latest songs... no vocals during the chorus because my microphone isn't working correctly.

Most of the songs I've written this summer are in this style... lots of little guitar flourishes, lots of half-muttered lyrics.

The lyrics are probably fairly obvious... it's one of those "morning after" songs, where you realize you made a mistake by saying too much or too little the night before. At the same time, however, you realize the general sentiment or conclusion of the matter was unavoidable and perhaps even the 'right' one... but the means to the end could have been a bit more thoughtful.

So far, I've kept the song pretty simple (at least in the recording you're hearing). My main concern is deciding whether I should leave this one for the acoustic guitars, or add a piano and bass and other stuff.

I experimented a bit with a shaker and a sleighbell to give it a stronger pulse, but I don't have that in this recording, because it sounded a little too driving.

I guess I should actually upload several different versions of the same song so you can compare... I'll work on that this week.

Lyrics:

Verse One

I don't suppose I've ever been called a coward,
At least not to my face.
But by God the way you looked at me last night,
Your eyes begging me to stay.
And I won't be caught idly supposing that your,
That your offer's still, still good tonight.
I guess you can call me a cynic,
Or just the loser of one too many fights.

Chorus

Well there I go repeating myself again,
When the truth is you won't be calling me anything at all.
... this line in progress ...
... this line in progress ...

Verse 2

Well look who's talking now, why it's my old good friend,
Mr. Know-it-all himself.
And he leaves you wondering
Just when exactly I suddenly stumbled upon
All this wisdom, insight, knowledge, shit and wealth.

Chorus

For Your Listening Pleasure...

2006-09-05T11:33:00.000-04:00

I've decided to move a slightly different direction with this blog. Lately, I've been recording a lot of music. Unfortunately, I'm absolutely terrible at producing "finished recordings". Generally, I lay down a few tracks and then feel inspired to write a new song. Even when I DO stick with a song, I tend to get stuck in the mixing/mastering process and lose what little creative vision I began with.

I'm also quite fearful of placing my music in public domain, since it's never as "perfect" as I'd like. But I've decided that I should start posting my "unfinished" songs for your listening pleasure. More than that, I'm hoping for your comments. And not the, "Wow... what a great song... You rawk!!!" kind of comments, but rather the, "The drum track sounds atrocious. The third line of your lyrics is contrived. The song needs more rhythm and less random synthesizers..." kind of comment.

Essentially, I'm hoping that the public can help me refine my song-writing/recording skills and perhaps I'll even have a few "finished products" lying around by Christmas. As soon as I get some webspace, I'll create a post for every song and perhaps put up the lyrics and some comments about the direction/feel I'm searching for, additional tracks I'm recording, etc.

Note that the link to each song is the 'title' of the post. Feel free to save the file to your computer and proliferate it to the masses.

Full with Desire, Empty of Delight

2006-06-20T02:02:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I listed a number of C.S. Lewis quotes on 'joy', noting the presence of deep, inconsolable longing as a large part of his definition. As well, there must be a present, if transient, enjoyment and delight in the moment itself. Thus, while my Greek lexicon defines 'chara' as the experience of gladness, I would submit that an equally appropriate definition would be the desire for delight.

Over the last week, I've run about 40 miles (and a lot more in my head!) while contemplating why my relationship with Sarah fell apart, how I'm supposed to respond to my birth mother, where God is leading me next year and in the years to come, and both attitudes and behaviors that need to change in my life. I believe a lot of this centers on joy. Contentment has never come easily to me. With greater and greater clarity, God has been voicing a truth to me that now seems obvious.

I am always consumed by desire, but rarely filled with delight.

One of my clearest memories came but a few weeks ago. As I boarded a plane to return to America, I felt the all too common mixture of dread and eager expectation. Since the day I knew I would be traveling to Korea, every morning had begun in this conflicted manner. A part of my soul yearned for time to be cut short, that I might arrive in Korea sooner. But another part hoped I would wake up in a different world, where such a voyage would not be necessary. This part of my soul realized that my ache for the quick passage of time was founded upon my inability to concentrate on anything in the present more than a true desire to return to Korea and meet my birth family.

It was a bit strange, then, that I felt this same dread and expectation on my trip back to America. For weeks, my thoughts had been focused on the trip to Korea, not the return to the United States. But suddenly, all of the thoughts I had experienced about Korea reversed themselves: "How will my birth family in Korea receive me?" turned into "How will my friends and family at home receive me?" How radically had a week in Korea changed me? Would others detect this change, perhaps even before I could? Would my heart feel at rest, at home?

(Yes, I will connect this rather biographical post with my musings about joy and desire and delight at some point. But people are very curious about my trip to Korea, so this is a good way to tackle my personal experiences and my theological musings at the same time. My apologies to those of you who are only interested in one or the other.)

The height of my emotional exhaustion occurred at a rather surprising point in the flight. A few hours after taking off, the flight attendants began passing out our first meal. A tray of Korean food was placed in front of me. Amidst the cramped, poorly lit, dismally stale airplane, there appeared the perfect image of Korean aesthetic and simplicity. Each vegetable was precisely aligned, the kimchi cut in a perfect rectangle, the colors of the meal arrayed with careful attention to the ying and yang. Every object on the tray sang out in unison, praising the Korean ideals of balance and poise.

The purity of this experience, stirred in with my realization of it being the last truly Korean memory I would have for years, served as the final emotional pull to unwind my heart. In this horrendously crowded but unavoidably impersonal airplane, I began to cry, then sob, then weep. While I've developed the tendency to tense up and shed a lone tear rather often, I am not one to weep. And if I do, it is not in public. But for one of the first times in my adolescent/adult years, I no longer had control. Looking back, I feel a great deal of pity for the stewardesses, who flurried about and tried to help me, but could not speak enough English to know what was wrong. I clumsily handed them my tray of uneaten food and buried my face in shame and embarrassment; for a Korean man to cry in public both shocked and discomfited those who could hear me, and I could tell. My ineptitude at being a Korean was complete.

After regaining my composure, I decided to wash my face in the bathroom. Making my way aft, I stopped for a moment at a rear window. The cabin had been darkened at this point, but strange, thick shafts of blue light pried their way into the last few rows of the airplane. Moments before I pressed my face against one of the rear windows, I cast a quick look about me, fully expecting every pair of eyes in the airplane to be focused on me. Instead, I saw a man awkwardly sprawled out on two seats, attempting to sleep for a few hours. Several women sat next to each other, eyes glazed over and drawn into the small screens on the seats in front of them. In Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, English, Vietnamese, the headphones and subtitles blared forth their polyphonous cacophony of silent noise.

My eyes fluttered back to the window. It took me several moments to recognize what I was seeing. Tens of thousands of feet above the earth, traveling at hundreds of miles per hour in a lone airplane, I experienced for the first time the suspension of time I have always desired. Far to the west, at the edge of my periphery, a slivered moon glowed with a searing but hollow intensity, as if God had etched a small carving into the firmament and let the pure white burn of His glory shine through. As my eyes moved east, the deep void surrounding the moon tempered bit by bit. Like the temple curtain, torn in two at the moment of Christ's death, the horizon to the far east ripped apart at the seams, revealing clouds that burst forth with the power of the burning blind of the sun.

Were this all my eyes were beholden to see, I would still count myself as one man in a billion. How many men in ages past would have given all of their possessions for this one moment? It seemed as a myth to me, a story in which my youth or the love of my life or my soul itself would be demanded as payment for the magic of being simultaneously blinded by the sunrise and chilled by the cold of the darkest of nights.

But quite astonishingly, the painting was not yet complete. My eyes dropped below the horizon into a sea of churning motion. Beneath me lay the Aleutian volcanoes and mountains, dancing in and out of the cover of clouds and mist. Occasionally, the bright greens or blues of a lake or the stark white of a glacier would emerge from the sweeping, reckless mess of snow and stone below me. The perfect stillness of the sun, moon and sky above the horizon accented the swirl of the landscape below the horizon. The sheer, sharp dark of the west stood in stark contrast to the burning haze of the east. I sat, entranced, for nearly an hour. At any moment, I expected the scene to disappear forever. After this seemingly eternal span of time, a disturbance did indeed divert my focus. Many dozens of miles away, a pinpoint of light appeared, nestled among the mountains. Even as the light grew stronger, it diffused so quickly that I could not identify its source. But as I began to see not one but many burning lights, it dawned upon me that I was watching the sleeping city of Juneau.

I often prefer the potency of words when I try to communicate an idea or memory or emotion to another. But here, they completely fail me. The beauty was overwhelmingly ineffable. These sentences must be read in order, one at a time, but the image I just described assaulted me in a single sustained moment. For once in my life, I felt the joy C.S. Lewis describes. My heart burnt with desires of every sort. I desired to be with Sarah, that we might share this moment together. To a lesser degree, I desired to be with anyone or everyone, that all might see the extent of God's beauty. But at the same time, there was the deep desire I have spoken of in many entries over the years; the desire for the fullness of beauty, a desire for the day to come, when joy will be complete. Yet these desires came as no surprise to my heart, though their extent was stronger in this instant than few others in my life. Instead, the surprise came in the unavoidable delight my heart felt in the moment.

Why have I always been a man, driven from one place to another, unsettled and relentless in my pursuit of pursuit itself? A portion of this is universal to all man; we were not created for this world as it stands, and shall never find our satisfaction here. But I believe a great deal of my restlessness also has to do with a fundamental imbalance in the way I typically experience life. Those who know me best also know that I often have a vacant look in my eyes, as though dispossessed (or perhaps possessed). The strength of my desires and the weakness of my delight causes me to withdraw from this world and its joys. Again, words begin to fail me.

Today, I turned twenty-two. Much to my dismay, in many ways. I've always hated my own birthday (probably because it's supposed to be a time of delight, and I've realized how poor I am in delighting!), and this year seemed in many ways the hardest of all, because my heart is in so many different places at once, and I seem to be without the emotional strength or stamina to find an abundance of joy in my current circumstances.

That our joy might be complete, Jesus Christ must be the 'joy of man's desiring', but equally the joy of man's delight. I have often believed I lacked a full joy because my desires were misdirected. While this is undoubtedly the case in many circumstances, I am now beginning to realize that even in those rare moments when my desires are properly focused, I continue to lack joy because I fail to delight in the here and the now. I also realize I have failed to appreciate many around me, or seemed to lack an appreciation for the very same reason. Rather than delighting in my fellowship with someone, I'm too occupied with my desires and what could be or what might very well be in the next life. But too much desire draws me away from this world and the people in it. So I apologize for the distance I have forced between myself and everyone I know, and have begun to embark upon a new journey wherein I might continue to be consumed by desire, but also be filled to overflowing with delight. For much too long, I have felt solely the pang of joy, the inconsolable longing of joy, and the sorrow of joy. I pray now, because I am driven to desperation, that I might also know the comfort of joy, the peace of joy, and the delight of joy.

Our best havings are wantings...

2006-06-15T22:29:00.000-04:00

I'll be helping with the worship music at my church for the rest of the summer. This coming Sunday, Steve will be speaking on Joy. Thus, Wes (the worship elder) and I are focusing on songs that pertain to joy; specifically in the context of sadness of Christ's leaving this world, but the overwhelming joy brought by the Holy Spirit.

I am also quickly taken to Hebrews 12:2, where we are told, "looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

What is the joy that was set before Christ? The Greek word is 'chara', the experience of gladness. My own translation might be the desire for delight, where desire is the experience and delight the gladness, but that will be the topic of my next post. Whenever the word 'joy' is mentioned, my mind is also immediately drawn to a few C.S. Lewis quotes I mulled over, time and time again, during my road trip (and since then, I might add). I hope the following quotes resound in your heart as they do in mine. As the quotes are fairly lengthy and I could not help but include a great deal of them, I will try to add a minimal ammount of commentary and save most of my thoughts for my next post. There, I hope to explore the relationship between desire, delight and joy.

"It [joy] was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? ... Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison ... And in this experience also there was the same surprise and the same sense of incalculable importance. It was something quite different from ordinary life and even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, 'in another dimension' ... [it was] an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy ... anyone who has experienced it will want it again ... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures of the world."

"Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing."

"All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings."

"In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, . . . I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both . . . Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited . . . . Here, then, is the desire, still wandering and uncertain of its object and still largely unable to see that object in the direction where it really lies . . . Heaven is, by definition, outside our experience, but all intelligible descriptions must be of things within our experience. The scriptural picture of heaven is therefore just as symbolical as the picture which our desire, unaided, invents for itself . . ."

"The experience is one of intense longing . . . This hunger is better than any other fullness; this poverty better than all other wealth. And thus it comes about, that if the desire is long absent, it may itself be desired, and that new desiring becomes a new instance of the original desire . . . The human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given - nay, cannot even be imagined as given - in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience."

"You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported . . . All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it - made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand."

C.S. Lewis seems clear on this point: Joy is not the end, the telos, the culmination of all positive and negative emotions. It serves instead as a gatekeeper, releasing, luring, and enlarging our desires for a greater thing than the joy itself... Joy is an arrow pointing to heaven, an uncertainty, a longing, a hunger. It is not mere giddiness or excitement or happiness.

Perhaps my most radical misunderstanding of joy has been perceiving it as the opposite of sorrow. They are not opposed to one another, but imperiously commanding bedmates and lovers. As Jane Kenyon would say, "the soul's bliss and suffering are bound together like the grasses". Our best havings are wantings. The greatest joy is panged with the greatest and most inconsolable longing and sorrow. There must be desire and delight. More to come soon.

My favorite verse of the one song I'm insisting we sing on Sunday:

O Joy, that seeketh me through pain,
I dare not close my heart to thee.
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And find the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

What's Your Name?

2006-06-15T15:19:00.000-04:00

A typical conversation in Korea:

Random Korean: Hello.
Daniel: Hello.
Random Korean: What's your name?
Daniel: Daniel Lee Kearns.
Random Korean: No, your real name, please.

Sometimes, I attempted it in Korean. That conversation would go something like:

Random Korean: Annyeong haseyo
Daniel: Annyeong hasimnikka?
Random Korean: [some random phrase I assume to be 'what's your name']
Daniel: Che ireumin Daniel Lee Kearns eyo...

(By this time, it either switches to English or they give up. Because my Korean is so poor).

But there is a clear expectation for me to share my real [read: Korean] name. The funny thing is, I have a lot of ways to answer the question, "What's your name?"

When I was born, I was given the name Lee, Yung-Koo.
When I came to America, I was given the name Daniel Lee Kearns.
A few weeks ago, I discovered my Korean name was given to me by my adoption agency. My birth mother never saw me, and did not name me. Thus, at the age of twenty-one, I was given a new Korean name by my birth mother: Kim, Yoo-Jin.

I love the Hebraic attention to the meaning of names, and I hope to choose names for my own children (heh.. not sure about the whole marriage business... but hopefully?) that have significant and appropriate meanings. Time and time again in the Old and New Testaments, God orders men and women to give their children specific names. I think especially of John the Baptist's father, mute, and given the sole responsibility of naming his son.

Daniel means 'God is my judge'. Yoo-Jin means something like 'realizing the genuine truth'.

The significance of a name often appears as a 'chicken or the egg' dilemma from the eyes of man. A name in the Bible often carried the premonition of the man the child would one day become (Christ being perhaps the greatest example). But does the child grow into his name, and become that person because of the expectation? Or in the case of God's explicit choosing of a name, does it simply mark the child with a role or function or attribute he will become/display regardless of his awareness? Perhaps it's a needless question of causation that cannot be answered because of God's existence outside of space and time. But given my multitude of names, it's something I contemplate.

I'm overwhelmingly grateful for the 'el' in my name; a Hebraic tokening of God. My life has been filled with judgment and expectations, perhaps especially because of my status as an adoptee, a Christian, a natural leader and a strong student. Growing up, I was often told I had to be an accomplished scientist or pianist; others told me I would be a pastor one day. I was driven by the judgment and expectations of others to succeed in everything I attempted. Sarah often told me I am too hard on myself and this is also true. Growing up, I applied an enormous amount of pressure to myself because I felt it would be dishonoring to myself, my birth mother, and all underprivileged children if I did not take hold of every educational and circumstantial advantage I was given by my family in America. I judge my own mistakes harshly and abhor giving up.

But day after day, I am forced to return to my name. Gabe, I know you mock my recent use of my full name, but it was not solely because of Sarah or my family. It's because Daniel is a fuller use of my name, and retains the 'el', the focus on God as my judge and not man or myself. So the name of Daniel functions in a number of ways.

It functions as an ideal, as I struggle to keep God as my judge and no other.
It functions as a retroactive truth; for God is indeed my judge and I am in a covenant with Him, though I could not know that this would be the case when I was named.
It functions as an encouragement, an encapsulation of something I aspire to...

Yoo-Jin intrigues me for a plurality of reasons. It was given to me after reaching adulthood. It was given to me by the woman who held me in her womb for nine, tortuous months. Yet it was given to me by a woman who had never met me when she gave me this name, but simply communicated to me through letters and e-mails. Furthermore, I know my birth mother and I interpret the name differently. Yoo-Jin. Realizing the genuine truth. My birth mother named me Yoo-Jin because she was finally able to discover me as I truly am. Always, she had ideas of the kind of infant, the kind of boy, the kind of man I would be. But now, she realizes the genuine truth. This has been a both ecstatic and devastating experience for both my birth mother and myself, but I have to save that for another post.

For myself, Yoo-Jin could not be a more significant or multi-faceted name. Perhaps it would be the same for anyone, since it is the task of every man's life to realize the genuine truth. But there are so many truths... and a Truth... that I have realized over the past twenty-one years and specifically the past few months of my life, that I could not help but weep when I was given this name. Realization is a process. It is a dawning, an awakening. As a child slowly realizes the significance of the world about him and the difference between his parents and an inanimate object, as he acquaints himself more and more each day with the language of his family and begins to enunciate words of his own, so I have grown in my realization of who God is, and the centrality of His character and work in my life.

The story of my adoption has also been a story of realizing the genuine truth. Finally, after twenty-one years, I know where I was born. I know the names of the man and woman who gave birth to me. Slowly, I am learning more about where I came from and how the first ten weeks of my life and my Korean blood must be reconciled with my family here in America. I am realizing how each one of my names contributes to the whole and complete 'me'.

I could not possibly finish this post without a strong eschatological postlude. And as I discuss the multiplicity of my names, a look toward eternity comes effortlessly and with great hope. For in the midst of my confusion over my identity and the many places I have come from and the many names I have been given (some or all of them against my will), I anticipate receiving a new and final name. One day, perhaps in heaven I will be asked for my name and I shall reply with the name God ordained for me from before the existence of time itself. Then, and only then, shall all the questions that haunt me be answered, and these tears of confusion be wiped away.

Ten months later... I'm back.

2006-06-15T11:54:00.000-04:00

It's been ten months since I last posted, but expect the blogging to begin again.

A quick update on my life, since a lot has happened quite recently:

I graduated from Millersville University with a B.A. in philosophy. I'll be heading to Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) in the fall to pursue a Master's of Divinity. I'm still not sure if I'll end up pursuing more education with the intent of becoming a professor or enter a pastoral/ministry type of position, but I've got a number of years to figure it out. And the choices aren't exclusive of one another anyways.

About nine months ago, I found out my birth mother was alive and living in Seoul, S. Korea. At first, we communicated very slowly through snail mail. By March, however, we were communicating quite quickly through e-mail and a third-party translator (she only knows a little English, I know almost no Korean). One of our topics of discussion concerned meeting in person. I asked her if she would be interested in coming to America for my wedding, as I assumed that would happen within a year or so. She responded by telling me that she could not leave Seoul because of her parents waning health. Furthermore, her parents decided they would like to meet me, so visiting Korea became a priority. I ended up booking a flight and flying to Seoul from May 24-31st. I'm sure a number of posts may discuss all of this more deeply; in this post, I'm going to put up some pictures and also post the e-mail I wrote to my family and friends from Seoul. For some reason, the e-mail did not get through to everyone, so this way I can be sure all can read it.

As a final update, I am no longer dating Sarah Wingate. We were a day away from pre-marital counseling and I thought we would get married, but it now appears as though things are over. I guess that's why I have time to blog again. Here is my letter from Korea, followed by some pictures and further comments:

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings from Seoul, South Korea; the land of the morning calm. I
wanted all of you to know that I arrived in Seoul safely and
everything has gone smoothly in terms of getting to my hotel, meeting
up with my social workers, my birth mother, Liz Lee from Case, etc.
God has been extremely sovereign; my adoption agency, my birth
mother's apartment, my hotel, and Liz Lee's apartment are all within
about ten minutes of each other. You would find this especially
amazing if you had ever been to Seoul. The city is home to over 20
million people... apartment buildings and enormous business towers
loom on for miles and miles. Apartment complexes remind me of ant
hills, with tens of thousands of people living on mere acres of land.

In many ways, I find Seoul extremely disconcerting. The population is
enormously homogeneous. You can literally go hours on the street
without seeing a single non-Korean. It is very unlike an American
city, where different colors, races, ethnicities, etc. are so heavily
prevalent. Ever since I got on the airplane, there has been a
struggle between myself and other Koreans. The Korean cultural
expectation is that you will be fluent in the language and traditions
of Korea no matter where you grew up and no matter what circumstances
you were raised in. Thus, I am mostly viewed by older Koreans as a
third-rate Korean... and if they find out I'm adopted, it's even
worse.

On Friday, I met with two social workers at Holt International (the
agency I was adopted through 21 years ago), and then met my birth
mother and her parents. I can't really put any of this in words,
other than to say it was emotional, bewildering, and difficult. On
the one hand, I see the physical resemblance in my birth mother and
know she held me in her womb for nine months, and I feel some loyalty
and affinity to her. On the other hand, these people seem like
complete strangers to me, and our differing languages and cultures
isolate us.

I've been fed like a king since I arrived in Korea... Liz Lee + birth
mother = enormous amounts of food at least three times a day. I love
the food, but my body is having a difficult time taking in the sheer
volume and acidity of the meals here. After I get home and upload
some pictures to my computer, you can see just how much I've been
eating. I believe there were about 30 dishes (many were small, mind
you.. but still!) involved in the lunch I ate yesterday.

Please continue to pray for me and also for the salvation of my birth
mother. It has been tremendously difficult for me to be here,
emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I haven't had time to
recover from jet lag (I've been waking up at 3 or 4AM most mornings
and taking a jog around the city.. very fascinating) before being
thrown into a lot of emotionally exhausting experiences. I'm
struggling to figure out how honest and open I should be with my birth
mother. You might think this is silly, and I should be completely
forthright, but it's not quite that simple. It's not a question of
lying to her, but of how deeply I should share my thoughts and
emotions with her. She is ecstatic to see me and can't believe I'm
real. She is always holding my hand or stroking my head or holding my
leg when we are together. She is treasuring every moment we have
together, and is always wavering between smiling, because she never
thought she would see me (she did not see me when I was born) and
crying, because she wishes she could have raised me, and feels as
though it is now too late.

I want to bring happiness to her life and be a son she can be proud
of. But in my heart and mind, it is very, very clear to me that
Hershey is my home, and that my mom and dad and my brothers and sister
and Sarah and my friends are my home. While I would still like to
learn Korean and learn about Korean culture, it is not really 'my
own'. I feel like a complete stranger here, an impostor that looks
Korean but has nothing Korean about him. In America, I used to wish I
was white, because I was so different from my family and friends. I'm
old enough now that I've accepted my race and God's sovereign plans
for my life, but I can easily recognize how much easier it would be if
I were white in this culture! If you are a white American in Korea,
everyone wants to practice their english on you and they want to have
their picture taken with you, etc. But I am often viewed as a bastard
here, with an enormous amount of social stigma attached to myself and
my birth mother. When we went shopping together, she asked that I not
really speak to anyone, because she did not want another Korean to
know I was adopted. Instead, many thought I was a mute!

So it is very clear to me that I belong in America, not here... and
this has always been the case since adolescence. I came to Korea to
please my birth mother and to share the gospel with her. But I cannot
really tell her to her face, "Your city and your culture are
completely strange to me, and I am sick for home and family and Sarah
and friends and cry every night because I am so lonely here." It
would devastate her, and she has already had such a difficult life.
From the first day we met, she was already speaking about how the day
of my departure was coming so quickly, and how much it troubled her
that my time here was so little. I feel a little guilty, because I am
very much looking forward to returning home.

My birth mother did not want to go to church with Liz and I, which was
disappointing to me. But as I begin to understand the culture and the
depth of shame involved in having a child while unwed, I also
understand it is not a simple or easy thing for her to attend a
church. Liz and I went to a bookstore and I bought my birth mother a
Korean Bible yesterday, and I will give it to her tomorrow. I have
told her that I am continuing to pray for her and her parents;
sometimes she seems very non-responsive to these words and brushes
past them, other times she seems very emotional. The language barrier
makes all communication very difficult, so I can never really know
what she is thinking.

Everything that is happening here is so heavy! There is little
laughter, and I miss the lightness of life. I am counting down the
hours until I see my family, Sarah, Buttercup, Hershey, my friends,
etc. Today I am going to an ancient palace with my birth mother and
tomorrow I will visit the hospital where I was born with my birth
grandfather, so he can thank the doctor with me present. Tomorrow
will also be the last time I visit with my birth mother and birth
grandparents. Liz and I may try to hang out tonight and see the city
when it really comes alive (I can't wait to see this, because during
the day, it is so much more crowded than any city I've ever been in...
I can't imagine the night).

Oh, one last thing! The church Liz attends is incredible. It has
something like 10 services a week, and I think about 30,000 different
people attend the various weekly functions. On Sunday, we went to a
4PM service and they had six different sanctuaries open, so they could
seat everyone. The service was in Korean, so I understood almost
nothing (they did sing a few english songs), but it is extremely
Bible-centered and passionate. 6 of the 10 largest churches in the
world are in Seoul, with weekly attendance in the tens of thousands.
On Tuesday night, I may attend Liz's Christian medical fellowship and
play guitar with the guy leading worship. I don't expect to sing in
Korean, though... the language is so foreign and difficult that even
after being here for a week, I have only picked up a few words and I
still can't read the alphabet.

There is so much more I could write, but this e-mail is already so
long! I thank God for His faithfulness, even in such difficult
situations. I believe He connected me to my birth mother after 21
years of silence because He will grant her salvation. Please pray for
patience, as I want so badly for things to happen soon... but it
could be years or decades, and I must simply continue to pray for her
faithfully. I miss all of you and can't wait to be back in America.
Thanks for your prayers. God bless.

gripped by grace,

- daniel

My birth mother and her parents.

My birth mother, myself, and an array of Korean food. Every meal was aesthetically beautiful and incredibly delicious. It's also the first time in my life I could not ever finish all the food in front of me, because you just can't do it!

Weddings, Road Trips and Recollections

2005-08-17T01:17:00.000-04:00

Hours become days, days become weeks, weeks become months, and before you know it the summer has almost come to an end. In my case, with a long (unplanned) sabbatical from the ol’ business of writing on my blog (not to mention reading the blogs of others!). I actually intended to begin updating again a week or two ago, but my PowerBook and its plethora of half-finished entries decided to die on me. So here I am, forced to start from scratch again. I’ll start with an entry I began in early July…

Last weekend I attended Partusch’s wedding out in Oxford, Ohio. While I’ve attended numerous weddings in the past few years, Mike is the first Case Western buddy I’ve seen married off. When I reflect upon the ten strangest days of my life, weddings just so happen to hold four positions. This weekend was no exception. For those of you who have been reading my blog/xanga for awhile, you might recall me mentioning my inherent discordance with the instances of life this world might deem most beautiful. Weddings bring silent tears to my eyes for a reason almost wholly disconnected from the persons involved. On a more universal level, I simply wonder if the pure white dress, the sheer perfection of the ceremony celebrates a falsity. I do not mean that marriage is a terrible thing; I simply wonder if the typical wedding ceremony exaggerates the truth of life, the bundled up joys and sorrow of relationship. Perhaps it is because I find the greatest beauty in that which I sense to be the most honest and truthful depiction of life; but I wonder if I would not rather celebrate my wedding (if there ever be one) on a more somber note, beginning not with exaltation but confession, not standing in pride but kneeling in shame, not with a vow to my beloved, but a cry for mercy and grace from my Beloved. Of course, since a wedding is a portrait of Christ and the church, not the other way around, perhaps this attempt at perfection can properly be an attempt to relay the majesty of the Wedding feast in a fallen world. The reception ran rather late on Saturday night and as usual, I decided to drive home straight through the night. So with these thoughts on my mind, the long trip began.

I do this for more than the pragmatic reasons of an empty road. The night’s reign over the sleeping world presents one with an entirely different rendition of the same underlying reality. As my lone headlights hacked their way forward, mile after mile, shadows bent and bowed before me. Here, a giant oak elongated and exaggerated for a hundred yards; there, a maple twisted and torn into a thousand shapes, like a hapless shadow puppet. The most dramatic moment, of course, is the inevitable transition from dark to light. As the sun stolidly fights for its birthright, the moon flees high above the horizon. Every time I blink, the sky surrenders another shade, another hue, as the last vestiges of blackness become dull grays for a moment, luminescent grays a moment later. The once indiscernible and distant hills, pressed out to the corners of my mind, transform from the young, waif-like figure of a girl into the full breasted and shapely form of the young, reckless woman. The Painter’s brush is poised, His palette of colors at his side. A stroke of carmine for the halo of the approaching sun, a spattering of sepia for the plowed fields. A smear of wisteria for the collapsing darkness of the horizon, a speckling of viridian for the leaves, gently bidding the night adieu.

Amidst this visual splendor, I listened to song after song of Celtic music. If my disposition, my experience of life could be embodied in a single tradition of music, it would probably be the Celtic tradition. I took it all in quietly. The tin whistles and pipes, now in harmony, now separated by the smallest of distances. Perhaps one scoops a note where another does not, perhaps one mournfully trills with indecision while another strikes true. The melody is discernible in all; it is simply retold by each instrument as one might recall the same event a dozen different ways. The lines are blurred between harmony and unison, dissonance and resolve. The piano hesitates with the gentle, naïve reticence of a woman’s first kiss, then strikes forth in syncopation, like a brash young man. And the hypnotic voice of the woman singing in Gaelic, an instrument in itself. With every breath, every convolution of pitch, she rocks forward and back, forward and back, the beaten, battered, but beautiful ship riding abreast of the tumultuous tune beneath her.

As the darkness of the early morning fell from my eyes like scales, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. As I could do neither, I simply reflected on the thoughts attempting to emerge from the fraught tendrils of my mind. My car barreled down the highway, trailing behind it twenty-one years of life and experience. The last year of my life has been an interesting one. Like Icharus, I have flown closer to the heavenly heights than I could have ever imagined, but likewise plunged closer to the fires of hell. And for the first time, the experiences seem legitimate. For as a child cannot discern the difference between the most expensive and cheapest of wines, so I could not capably discern between the more and less significant events of my life for many years; I simply crashed my way through them without the least bit of inspection or understanding. Indeed, it is in the recollection of an experience that I seem to impute importance, significance, even legitimacy. Did I understand the Gospel at age six, ten, sixteen, or twenty? Perhaps so, perhaps not. But as I cast my eyes back over my shoulder, I retroactively apply the whole of my experiences to this very day and find the very significance I desire for the past in the present: “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts…” Perhaps I am foolish to view the past year as the first set of ‘independently legitimate’ experiences. In twenty years, I will probably reflect upon the early years of my manhood and be amazed at the foolish rashness of my supposedly informed decisions and experiences. Those experiences which I thought incredibly important at one time may fade into disregard, while the once ill remembered become most significant. The conclusion is simple, Ecclesiastical, and one of my largest struggles: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

A Call to 'Stab These Monsters in the Face'

2005-07-07T11:28:00.000-04:00

As you've probably heard by now, terrorists bombed several Underground trains and a bus earlier today. I wonder if this is a preemptive strike to scare folks away from the 2012 Olympics (which London just won). Actually, as I think about it a bit more, the notice is probably too short and the timing is probably coincidental. I'm on the run, so I don't have time to flesh out many thoughts... but London is in some sense a dangerous choice for the terrorists. After all, the British are the most involved European country in the war on terror; they will not capitulate like Spain. Indeed, it already looks as though Blair is determined to kick things up a notch. I'm praying he does. Along those lines, an excellent article Justin Cave sent me a few weeks ago...

Lord Have Mercy; What About Lord Vader?

"But while we can all be forgiven, we must respect the choice to reject forgiveness -- permanently. Mercy is for seduced sinners; for those not wholly given over to darkness. When we find men who have freely bound themselves to evil with unbreakable chains of their own forging, a decent respect for justice and free will sometimes compels us to stab these monsters in the face."

Amen, Douglas... Amen.

The Books Tag

2005-07-07T03:28:00.000-04:00

I've been tagged by Dad! So to answer the books questionaire...

How many books do you own?

I'm guessing I own somewhere around 300-400 books. The bulk deal with Christian theology, 'Christian living' or philosophy. Somewhere under 100 would be 'classics' or anthologies, books or poetry, or novels by Michener and the like.

What's the last book you read?

Does this mean read or completed? Everyone seems to be answering it as 'completed'. Well, a full list of books I've read (and possibly completed) this week includes Brian McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy, a collection of Dorothy Sayres' Lord Wimsey mysteries, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, James Michener's Siberia, Thomas Watson's All Things for Good and William Bridge's A Lifting Up for the Downcast.

What are five books that mean the most to you?

I find these questions exceedingly difficult. I'm young enough that books have been most significant because of the stage of life I happened to be in when I read them. Very few books have I read more than twice. I would have to credit J.I. Packer's Knowing God for introducing me to to the realm of theology and practicing a deeper spiritual life. I believe James Michener and John Steinbeck are the only authors whose books have been emotionally moving enough to bring me to tears, so I'll credit their books (especially Michener's Centennial and Poland and Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unknown) as numbers 2 and 3. I know, I'm cheating. John Piper's Desiring God also expanded my conception of the Christian life significantly, specifically viewing it as a list of do's instead of don'ts. Finally, I'd have to credit the three bedside companions that have consistently infused my 'devotional time' with new life: Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, Valley of Vision (a collection of Puritan prayers) and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Since I don't really have anyone to tag, I will preemptively tag my readers and demand you to fill out the questionaire as a comment to this post.

Later today, I'll be heading to Cincinnati for a wedding. Earlier this week, I bought one of these, so that I can brainstorm/blog/journal while I'm at work or on the move. I'm a bit worried of becoming too dependent on the lil guy, but it seemed to be the best way to redeem my 'down' time at the post office. Actually, that's the primary reason I refuse to own a cell phone; I realize it would be useful, but it would also become an unnecessary dependence (and monetary expenditure). So I will continue to resist. Depending on whether or not I drive through the night on Saturday, I should be back in the Hershey area for church on Sunday or for Kairos in the afternoon. Have a great weekend!

Musings on Ecclesiastes

2005-07-07T02:43:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be updating Kairos' blog for the next number of months (pray that I have the time!), so I thought I'd throw up my first Kairos blog on this site as well. It's not as refined as I'd like to think some of my other posts have been, but I've been under a time crunch and it's also a strange amalgamation of several discussions Kairos had + Daniel's own random thoughts. One of my goals in life is to eventually write a commentary, or at least a series of meditations on the book of Ecclesiastes (especially since Calvin never seemed to get around to it!). Undoubtedly, Ecclesiastes and Job are the two primary books of the Bible I did not thoroughly understand, in an experiential sense, until I began college. As such, they have become my two 'favorite' books of the Bible. Hope you enjoy the post.

First of all, a bit of background about the major themes and purposes of Ecclesiastes (which we brought up during our discussion of chapter 1, since these themes are introduced therein).

Ecclesiastes, or ‘Qoheleth’ in Hebrew, means ‘the preacher’. The book of the Bible is classified as wisdom literature, and whether or not Solomon actually wrote the book, it is written from his perspective. Note that wisdom literature is primarily impressionistic, not literal. We are to draw away from Ecclesiastes principles, ideas and patterns, not strict, specific guidelines to micromanage our lives.

The phrase ‘under the sun’ or ‘under heaven’ is used approximately thirty times in Ecclesiastes. Understanding this concept is critical in correctly interpreting Ecclesiastes. Hebraic cosmology placed the earth at the center of the universe. The skies, or firmament, surrounded the earth and contained the sun or moon. Outside of the firmament lay the heavens. The heavens were essentially an outer shell to the universe, where the angels, demons, ‘heaven’, etc. resided. Thus, when the preacher speaks of ‘under the sun’, he speaks of earth and earth alone. That which occurs ‘under the sun’ does not include the afterlife, eternity, etc. Thus, one’s work might be futile or unfruitful ‘under the sun’, though it is storing up treasures in heaven. Ecclesiastes’ scope is generally limited to that which is under the sun. In this sense, Ecclesiastes is not about ultimate reality, but it is about the world in which we wake up every morning, the world in which we interact.

As I’ve already mentioned, Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature. We must be specific about what is meant by ‘wisdom’ in Ecclesiastes. After all, Solomon was the ‘wisest’ man to live, but what wisdom is to be found in thousands of wives and concubines? Solomon’s wisdom primarily dealt with the governance of a body of people. His wisdom, in some sense, was a deep and thorough understanding of jurisprudence and the nature of man. Thus, while he may not have lived a thoroughly ‘wise and righteous’ life himself, he was enabled by God to wisely rule a nation. So the wisdom of Ecclesiastes often deals with understanding human nature and the nature of this world, not giving us pat answers to the proper living of this life. Also, the word for ‘wisdom’ is also used as ‘skill’ or ‘talent’ in other parts of the Old Testament: for instance, the various craftsmen and skilled laborers God elected to construct His temple had ‘wisdom’ in each of their trades.

Ecclesiastes often dwells on the strangeness of time. We are never at comfort with time; quite often, none of it seems quite right. We don’t belong, and this is perhaps the strongest clue we have about the fallen nature of man and our original intention (later in Ecclesiastes, it speaks of God ‘putting eternity in our hearts’.) While we were certainly never intended to be infinite creatures, the acute finite nature of our life and death, the cycles that plague us, the hindsight and foresight that change with every glance, all of these point to the absurdity of our lives under the sun.

The discontent and insatiable nature of man is also quite prevalent in Ecclesiastes. Again, this points to the holistic nature of the fall; both man and the creation bear the burden of the curse. It is not simply the case that an imperfect creation no longer satisfies an untouched man, nor is it the case that an unharmed creation can on longer satisfy fallen man. Rather, the fallen-ness of both creation and man collide.

Ecclesiastes also deals with labor, in which we find great weariness and no gain. The results are unpredictable and disappear; even those results which we find pleasing will one day pass and there is nothing new under the sun.

Perhaps most surprising in Ecclesiastes is its insight into knowledge and wisdom. The author concludes that knowledge of truth only lead to sorrow and wisdom only increases our pain. “What is crooked cannot be made straight and what is lacking cannot be counted” (Ecc. 1:15). With wisdom and knowledge comes inevitable frustration, for under the sun we cannot wholly unbend the crookedness of this world nor untie the knots of man’s fallen nature. We should not be surprised that a true knowledge of this world and a true knowledge of man generates overwhelming sorrow; even within the Godhead, we see a kind of divine sorrow over the condition of creation under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 2 is divided into three main sections: the vanity of self-indulgence, the vanity of living wisely and the vanity of toil.

The vanity of self-indulgence

In the first section of Ecclesiastes 2, the Solomonic author speaks of tremendous building projects and vast accumulation of possessions. Solomon surpasses all before him (and arguably after) in riches, wisdom, possessions, legacy, etc. He keeps his heart from no pleasure, yet inevitably finds all to be vanity. At this point, we discussed how we, as Christians, are called to live in this world. Solomon’s behavior seems to mirror more closely ‘easier to ask forgiveness than permission’ than ‘better safe than sorry’, though we often tend towards the latter. Over-indulgence and asceticism are both extremes; how do we tread the middle ground? Also, there was discussion over the nature of Solomon’s indulgence. Several put forth the idea of Solomon only indulging himself as a test, while still trying to maintain an outside, objective viewpoint. I (Dan) cautioned against taking this concept too far, because it could de-legitimize Solomon’s project. After all, if he conducted all of his indulgence in a stand-offish manner, I could claim, “Solomon only found dissatisfaction because he simply tested the waters with his big toe… I’m going to jump in, head first.”

In vs. 10-11, we find one of many paradoxes within Ecclesiastes: the author says, “for my heart found pleasure in all my toil,” and one verse later, all of it is vanity and striving after the wind. Here we find lurking the immediate reward (in which he found pleasure), the reward of hindsight (in which he found vanity), and unspoken of is the eternal reward. This touches on the issue of perspectivalism, with which I will conclude this post.

The vanity of living wisely

The author claims there is “more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness.” Yet ultimately, “The same event happens to all of them.” Once again, we are drawn into the value of perspective. In the ‘shortest’ of views, living foolishly may appear to be the most pleasurable, enticing, fulfilling, etc. In a slightly longer view, wisdom appears to show greater merit. But if our perspective is broadened from the moment of our birth to the moment of our death, we see the vanity of living wisely: both the wise man and the fool will die.

The vanity of toil

The author of Ecclesiastes finishes his list of ‘vanities’ in Chapter 2 with toil. Here, we see the control-freak beginning to show in Solomon. Not only does he desire to control his own life and the circumstances within his own lifetime; he wishes to extend himself past his own lifetime. After all, why should some worthless fool come after him and waste his hard-earned treasure? Why should a lazy man inherit the fruits of the hard-working man?

Man, it seems, has a deep longing to be remembered past his own lifetime, a deep desire to be recalled and revered with honor and respect. Perhaps this comes out of our pride, perhaps it comes out of a distorted desire to be known intimately by others. From carving our names into every imaginable surface (Justin ‘fessed up to this one) to leaving behind enormous tombstones, man desires to be known. Our desperate search for significance leaves us utterly hopeless if we seek only to be known by this world. In my own life, I see an even stronger fault: I often seek to be known by those whom I know the least. After all, if I a near-stranger ‘knows’ me from hearing my music, reading my blog, listening to me teach, I have far greater control over the extent of the Daniel they know. And so it I find myself desiring to only be known for that which I find attractive in my self.

We toil to be remembered, we toil to leave behind us a legacy, we toil to make our lives significant, our work enduring. But in the end, all is vanity.

The Conclusion

The conclusion the Solomonic writer reaches? Eat, drink and be merry. Enjoy God’s creation. Look at vs. 24-26: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after the wind.”

A more literal translation of ‘find enjoyment’ would be ‘make his soul see good’. Perhaps God’s gift to the one who pleases God is not found in circumstance, but in perspective. After all, both the flooding rains and the withering droughts fall on righteous man and sinner like. Death becomes them all. But with the gift of perspective, the righteous man is able to eat and drink with enjoyment. As fallen man in a fallen world observes the fleeting pleasures and the ultimately vain roads to be traveled before him, it is a God-given lens which gives him the perspective to escape despair. To declare the difference between the one who pleases God and the sinner as a half-full/half-empty comparison does a great injustice. For with the proper perspective, we can enjoy complete fullness in the vanity of life under the sun; admitting and even embracing the simple truth of joy and sorrow being bundled together like sticks, realizing that many of the days to come shall be evil, but finding joy in every moment all the same. The mundane, the momentous, the tragedy and the victory; all are inescapable under the sun and all is striving after the wind, but we blessed few can see them in their proper context and rejoice in the midst of vanity.

A (Lame) Update

2005-07-01T00:45:00.000-04:00

I know this will be regarded as a below average post, but what can I say... I'm insanely busy. Due to the prodding of certain individual (*cough* Lord Vader), I will say this... at some point within the next few blogs, I will finally address not only the opinions of others on dating and relationships and such, but begin to project my own views. I just can't promise when these updates will occur; if I had a PDA they would come a lot sooner (there's plenty of downtime at work to write). I'm about to finish an update for the Kairos blog on Ecclesiastes, so I'll throw that up here over the weekend.

But for now, the (lame) update.

Take this quiz!

Damn... you're probably wondering how badly the post office has brainwashed me... a link to one of those stupid quizzes on Daniel's venerated blog!? But seriously, it's a fairly interesting quiz. With rather stunning results. I actually took the quiz twice, because my initial results seemed a bit strange. The second time, I played 'hardball' and went to a complete extreme (completely agree or completely disagree). The results:

(Take #1)

Anselm - 93%
Luther - 87%
Barth - 87%
Schleiermacher - 73%
Calvin - 67%
Jonathan Edwards - 40%
Moltmann - 40%
Augustine - 33%
Finney - 27%
Tillich - 20%

I was a bit surprised to see Anselm at the top of my list; perhaps I'm becoming a little more Patristic/Catholic than I thought. But then, St. Anselm is only Catholic in the sense that St. Augustine is Catholic; I think I can accept that. And he was a philosopher. Also a bit surprised to see Barth and Schleiermacher taking such high positions... while I find myself giving them a tremendous 'amen' in certain areas of their theology, I also have much larger problems with their systems than I do with Luther, Calvin, Edwards, etc. Speaking of which... why is my main man Edwards so low on the list? And finally... overjoyed to see Finney and Tillich at the bottom of the heap.

So what happens when Dan goes hardball? I'm expecting the Reformers to jump up a bit.

(Take #2)

Anselm - 100%
Barth - 87%
Calvin - 67%
Schleiermacher - 67%
Luther - 53%
Tillich - 33%
Edwards - 33%
Moltmann - 33%
Finney - 33%
Augustine - 0%

How can I be 100% Anselm and 0% Augustine!? Granted, there are a lot of shady, leading and unclear questions within the survey. Also, I'm highly disturbed that Tillich and Finney are tied at 33% with Edwards. Maybe the post office really IS brainwashing me. Speaking of the post office... I've got a date with her in not so many hours. So do me a favor. Take the quiz and post your result as a comment with your name attached. I'm always interested in knowing who really reads this ol' blog. I promise some more thoughtful updates within the next week or two... thanks for bearing with me.

P.S. You could send tax-free donations to my house ... for every 12 dollars I receive, I will dedicate one hour to blogging. Maybe if I get enough financial support, I'll quit my job at the post office.

P.P.S. Special thanks go to Justin and Ryan for taking this quiz before me...

An Apology and an Update on Life

2005-06-21T00:17:00.000-04:00

Folks,

I apologize for being tardy in my posts (especially the series on postmodernism and my thoughts on Holtzmann's 'Dating with Integrity'). But it is not due to laziness; in fact, I figured I'd take this moment to give you a quick update on my life. Especially since it often seems hard to follow and I've had several people ask me what I'm doing. So in no special order:

Work - I am what we like to call a Casual Small Parcel Bundle Sorter Operator at the United States Post Office Distribution Center in Harrisburg, PA. I sit around and type on a keypad while processing mail through a conveyer belt. It tends to be incredibly boring, but I can think of at least three perks. It's a union job; so everyone is super-lazy. I have, by far, the best work ethic at the place. My work ethic is generally thwarted by a lack of actual tasks to accomplish, however, so in an 8.5 hour day I can typically read for about 3 hours. They allow you to listen to discmen/walkmen/ipods all day long, so I've been tearing through some Great Courses on Tape lecture series from the Learning Company, as well as random lectures and sermons found online. Finally, I get 12 bucks an hour standard, 18 for any 9th or 10th hour in a given day or any hour over 40 in a week and 18 for hour any 11th or 12th hour in a given day. While they've been doing crazy things like asking me to come in at 4AM on a Saturday, I'm making a killing. I can't complain.

School - Hey, here's a big one. I will not be going back to Case Western Reserve in the fall. I'm going to take part-time classes at Millersville University, to finish up my philosophy major. By the spring semester, I'll probably be full-time. I'm also going to take the LSAT and GRE next year. I'll be applying to Westminster Theological Seminary, St. John's College (Annapolis) and a few law schools (probably Georgetown, Maryland, Villanova and Penn). I'd say an M.Div at Westminster and a PhD or ThD at Princeton are at the top of my list, but I'd really like to attend St. John's beforehand. While I feel relatively intelligent, I don't feel extremely educated at this point; and certainly not in a community setting. College was fairly worthless. I continued to be self-educated. I'm considering law school because I've thought about trying to be a justice someday, and because I could also probably pay my way through seminary with a part-time law job. I also wouldn't mind teaching law at the university level, along with theology and philosophy. Ideally, I think I'd like to finish up at Millersville and commute to St. John's for the next couple years, while still living around the Hershey area.

Church, etc. - I'm back at Living Hope in Harrisburg, after many forlorn years. I'm meeting with Pastor Ken on Wednesday to discuss membership; since you have to be 18 to be a member and I left Central PA right after I turned 18, I never became a member at LHC. We have to talk a bit about infant baptism (I'm pro, Sov. Grace is anti) as well as communion, but I don't think it will be a huge deal. I joined the Koach's care group, I'm playing ultimate with the LHC guys on Thursday nights, and I'm hoping to start playing keyboards/electric guitar with the worship team before long. It's good to be hanging with the old schol LHCers again, after our many years of wandering around the country/globe.

I'm also a permanent part of Kairos again, a college-age Bible study of sorts at our house on Sundays. I actually led last week, and I'm hoping to be able to become more active in the year to come. I'm currently discussing a proposal I conjured up involving Covenant Christian Academy; I'd like to teach some sort of worldview/college preparation class next year.

Music - Once again, I'm trying to make music a large part of my life. I've set up a recording studio in the meat freezer of our other house, and thanks to an awesome birthday present, I can now master my mixes. Before long, I'll probably create a separate website for my music and allow you to download some tunes. I'm also hoping to start playing gigs at coffee shops in the area (I'm playing at the Harbour several times this summer).

Random Fun - I'm playing in CPUC's summer league again... on the illustrious team, 'Bastard Spawn of Whamm-O'. We're 3 - 1, two games having been decided on a point for the universe, and I am thoroughly enjoying myself! Between summer league, church pick-up, and random pick-up on Sunday after Kairos, I'm able to get in about 4 nights of frisbee a week. Not bad.

That about wraps up my life for the summer. I turned 21 yesterday and headed to Kclinger's with some of my friends. Tonight after frisbee, D.K. (senior) bought me a beer at an Irish Pub (but I refused to drink more than one). And the waitress... she kept on hugging me. It was a little creepy. I was also forced to skip around the outside deck to get my team to stop singing this annoying little ditty :-P

For a guy who typically feels extremely displaced, I'm feeling more 'settled down' than I have in years. Sure, there are still those evenings during which I feel completely lost and alienated... the evenings during which I just want to throw the backpack and tent in the car and head west again, or to some remote farming community in Canada. But it's not as normative as it's been in years past. Almost exactly a year ago, I left for my 8 week road trip/backpacking excursion across twenty-some states and more than two dozen National Parks. The agonizing landscape of the Badlands, the splintered peaks in Glacier, the majestic fleet we call the Grand Tetons, the towering Mt. Rainier offset by the pale, pink reflection of the setting sun on the snow; all of these were wholly new and breath-taking to me. Yet as I drove the backroads between my house and 283 the other evening, watching the sun slowly nestle within the gentle contours of the rolling Amish country, my heart cried out. Within the Ecclesiastical 'under the sun' framework, this is my home. The hills I could trace with my eyes shut, the roads I have traversed so many thousands of times.

I have been accused of clinging too tightly onto the past, acting out of nostalgia rather than progressiveness. Perhaps it is partly because the beginning of my life is one I cannot lay my hands on; it is here in Hershey that the known part of my story begins and I value it highly. But perhaps it is much more than that. As I've begun to use the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and discover the richness of liturgy and tradition, I've begun to equally appreciate on a renewed level the ideas of heritage and home. Even the fool will be breathless as the beams of the rising sun slowly weave their way through the mixture of mist and steam in Yosemite. But it is a completely different kind of breathlessness I experience as I witness the hundredth, the thousandth, the ten-thousandth sunset over the rustling fields near my house. My plea for immutability is in part answered by the land around me.

Shall I consider tonight's sunset yet another cycle in the endless monotony of life, another repeated stanza of a broken record? Or shall it be like the memorized symphony, with perhaps only one or two nuances erupting from the series of repeated notes; but this is enough. Shall it be like the oft-repeated prayers of the Anglican liturgy, spilled from my lips then gently breathed back into my soul? There is a beauty and significance only to be found in what this world condemns as mundane. Incessantly, we seek after 'once in a lifetime' experiences. Fools that we are! For in our time-bound lives, every experience is a 'once in a lifetime' experience. There are songs one can only weep to after the hundredth hearing. There are words, verses I have only found significant afte the thousandth reading. So while I still long to curve a bend in the river and gasp at the grandeur of Venice lying before me, I cannot relate to my peers who are abandoning home for the discovery of the new. The greatest discoveries, perhaps, are lurking only as far as one can gaze from the oft-climbed hill, the highest branches of the sycamore tree, the back deck of that strange, ephemeral 'place' we call home.

Sorry to get a little carried away there :-) In short, an update on my life? My transient home on this earth is no longer a tortuous distraction from the Home to come. Instead, as the first spring rain anticipates the lush bloom of flower, shrub and tree, so the tears I shed for this home anticipate the eternal beauty and permanence of my Home to come.

Pain Before the Fall?

2005-06-11T01:02:00.000-04:00

I was working on my transcription project this evening and a verse in Genesis stuck out:

"To the women He said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children" (Gen. 3:16a).

Other translations use the word increase rather than multiply; interestingly enough, NKJV and Young's Literal speak of "increas[ing] your sorrow and conception", not merely childbearing. The verse intrigued me because the words increase and multiply presuppose the existence of an amount. If God cursed Eve by increasing or multiplying the pain of childbirth, does this not imply that at least some (lesser) amount of pain was already intended, prior to the Fall?

If this is so, can we qualitatively label pain as 'evil' or 'wrong'? I could, perhaps, be extrapolating too much out of this verse, but it appears to me as though pain was part of God's plan for humanity even within the 'perfection' of Eden. Am I off my rocker?

While I'm on the subject of life before the Fall, let's talk about the animals. During college, I read quite a number of books on the topics of creationism, intelligent design, evolution, etc. The extremely literalist 7-day creationist types often argue for a false fossil record based on Gen. 3:21, when God clothes Adam and Eve. This is the first reference to the killing of animals in the Bible. But I've often wondered if we are not inferring too deeply to make the bold claim, "No animals could have died before Gen. 3:21." Is the death of an animal 'evil' or 'sinful'?

Some would argue based upon a future vision. The Bible speaks of future redemption in terms of a lion and lamb sleeping together. Surely, this implies the original state of Eden to be one of non-violence. But the Bible speaks of Heaven as a place without pain and suffering as well; if I'm reading Gen. 3:16 correctly (and I might not be!), Eden was not a place without pain and suffering. Thus, we cannot infer the state of Eden from the state of Heaven.

The idea of pain pre-existing the Fall has some more interesting implications, especially since the NKJV and Young's Literal speak of sorrow in addition to pain. But before I start blogging on these additional thoughts, someone please tell me if I'm off my rocker or if this seems consistent and Biblical. And please use textual evidence. I plan on reading some commentaries after work tomorrow (err.. today).

Justin Cave(s) + Ryan Davidson

2005-06-07T23:07:00.000-04:00

Justin Cave(d) and got a blog.

Ryan Davidson has had a blog for quite some time, I just never knew it.

Yes, my puns are awful.

Would you prefer me to finish the series on Postmodernism before beginning another, or hit on some topics (such as Holzmann's 'Dating with Integrity) in between pomo posts?

House of Sand and Fog

2005-06-07T00:21:00.000-04:00

As most of you know, I am fairly picky about the movies I’ll watch (at least at college). Not so much because I think “anything rated PG-13 or R is evil”, but because I don’t feel like wasting two hours of my life on a worthless piece of entertainment. If it’s strictly entertainment, it better be really, really, really, really, ridiculously amusing. And if it’s attempting to be artistic or literary, it had better succeed. Tonight, I watched ‘House of Sand and Fog’ starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. I don’t believe I had ever heard of the movie before. The movie reminded me of Sam Raimi’s ‘A Simple Plan’. The sin of a single individual quickly entangles others, drawing out their own sinful tendencies, and demolishing an entire community. For the one who might claim, “My sin doesn’t hurt others,” watch this movie.

While certainly not a “Christian” film, House of Sand and Fog goes against the Hollywood flow: sin is not portrayed in an appealing light. Unlike the myriad of movies which portray drugs, stealing, illicit sex, disrespect, etc. as cool, liberating and the height of human expression, House of Sand and Fog tells it like it is: sin ruins your own life and the lives of others. I won’t really say anything further, because I don’t want to spoil the movie or put you in a specific mindset before you watch the movie. But I highly recommend the film.

Disclaimer: The film is rated R for a significant amount of language and a scene of sexuality (which can be fast-forwarded). Sin shows up all over the place. But as I said before, it is not attractive. In almost every instance, my family, Olivia and I were groaning and gasping in despair as the characters indulged in vice.

The Art of Informed Appreciation

2005-06-06T01:19:00.000-04:00

While I don't have the time to expound much upon the following quotes, I've been meditating on them for about a week. Wilfred M. McClay is a professor at UTC (and he attended St. John's as an undergrad!), St. Bonaventure is... well... St. Bonaventure.

"Conservatives complain that the academy has lost its sense of rigor, but I
think it is more profoundly the case that the academy has lost its ability to
cultivate and nurture the art of informed apprecation. The very word appreciation has come to have a bad odor. Instead, the act of
criticism and the hermeneutic of suspicion reign over all else, and intellectual
life has become consumed with the intramural games of ideology and careerism
(often indistinguishable from one another).

My own graduate education in history [at Johns Hopkins] was almost entirely
focused upon the relentless cultivation of critical acumen at the expense of any
appreciation of the monumental labors of predecessors, which we were encouraged
to trash casually and fling upon the ash-heap of history. We learned a
great deal about "the historical profession," but very little about history
itself."

- Wilfred McClay

My own experience, as an undergraduate, has been a mixed bag. You get the Marxist professor, the feminist professor, the open theist professor that cannot appreciate a worldview other than their own and color all subject matter in academia through the lens of their worldview. If I had ever had an Evangelical Christian professor, he/she would have probably done the same. There is a complete lack of appreciation for the past and nearly anyone outside of their 'inner circle' (though revisionist history often places a number of past intellectuals within your 'outer circle').

On the other hand, you have the hardcore deconstructionist postmodern professors who have an equal lack of informed apprecation. For they pay lip service to all worldviews but disrespect them in one of two ways: by secretly (or not so secretly) clinging to their own worldview as distinct and better than all others under the guise of pluralism, or truly viewing all worldviews as cultural phenomenon without any legitimate claim in the realm of truth, ethics, morality, etc.

Within Christian circles, we find the same divide. The traditionally "conservative" Christians fall prey to the first camp, the traditionally "liberal" Christians to the second. Francis Schaeffer would be a good example of the first, with his blatant rejection of Descartes, Kierkegaard, Barth, etc., while Paul Tillich would illustrate the latter with his indiscriminate (and disingenuous, I would argue) "embrace" of all worldviews.

This dilemma is destroying most ecumenical efforts (more about this in my next postmodernism post) and frustrates me to no end. Indeed, it is only quite recently that I have begun to cultivate an informed appreciation of the church and church history. If you had asked me two years ago what I thought about the Catholic tradition, I doubt I would have had a single positive word. I love McClay's language: "to cultivate and nurture the art of informed appreciation." Mere criticism or strawman arguments or closed-mindedness are often the easy ways out. To cultivate and nurture the art of informed appreciation often means dividing hairs; to be authentic, you must know both your own worldview and another down to minute details, yet also view them in their broad scope (what philosophical/theological/moral implications would an adherence to this worldview produce, etc.). In addition, the to truly cultivate and nurture the art of informed appreciation, we must not hide behind the shields of scholasticism, professionalism or detached distanciation. Instead, we must approach academia with both mind and heart, as St. Bonaventure holds forth so eloquently:

"Do not assume that mere reading will suffice without fervor, speculation
without devotion, investigation without admiration, observation without
exaltation, industry without piety, knowledge without love, understanding
without humility, and study without divine grace."

- St. Bonaventure

Store Wars

2005-06-04T12:58:00.000-04:00

Last night, a friend of mine sent me the link in the title of this blog. As a lover of Star Wars and someone who is at least attempting to be a bit more green (biking to frisbee instead of driving, carpooling, etc.) and as part of a family who is also starting to buy fair trade/organic food, I can't help but recommend the video. It could possibly be the most effective form of rhetoric for my generation.

Speaking of which, an article on persuasion which Dad linked to this morning:

Is Persuasion Dead?

May the farm be with you...

Mapping Postmodernism: Absolute Truth Revisited (part 3)

2005-06-04T00:57:00.000-04:00

After the early Protestant Reformation’s attempts at ecumenism failed, the new Protestant church quickly set about systematizing and subsequently institutionalizing their new religious tradition. By combining Augustine and Descartes, the Protestants unknowingly reintroduced a method (via moderna), the very object of Luther’s original dispute with the Catholic church. Protestant scholasticism produced both theological liberalism and conservatism, strange bedfellows described by George Lindbeck as “two foxes, snarling at each other and pulling in opposite directions, but tied together by their tails.” These ‘ties’ were a fundamental commitment to the Cogito (radical doubt and scientific methodology) and a God’s eye view, and a principle of distanciation. Both theological conservatives and liberals believed in an object/subject split allowing them to study from afar without cultural and historical baggage.
The violence between theological conservatism and liberalism centered on the question of objectivism and subjectivism. Greer puts forth two primary questions, leading to a third.

“Is absolute truth located on an intuitive level (subjectivism) or on a cognitive level (objectivism)?

Is the Bible to be read intuitively, with little concern as to whether the historical episodes being recounted actually took place as presented, or is it to be read cognitively, demanding that historical precision is necessary before anything is believed and embraced?

Both traditions deemed intuition and cognition necessary. The difference between the two traditions therefore turned on a third question:

Which one – intuition or cognition – has the upper hand in one’s interpretation of the Bible?” (Greer, 35)

Liberalism, of course, chose intuition. Conservatism chose cognition. Within theological liberalism, the authenticity of the supernatural miracles, inspiration, etc. could not stand up to the rigor of the scientific method. Setting aside Luther’s theologia crucis and Calvin’s Deus dixit, liberalism (as embodied in Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher) asserted that “every true religion is a manifestation of an ‘intuition of the universe’, but the Christian religion is the highest and therefore most perfect expression of this intuition” (Greer, 35). Jesus is the Redeemer of all mankind, whether they acknowledge Him or not. Religious truth is not wholly personal (e.g. postmodernism), but rather religions mature in their ‘intuitive methodology’ as they more closely resemble the Christian faith. God endows us with a ‘prereflective feeling’, ensuring the same eventual conclusion of a Christian-like faith.

Flaws are obvious. If we are led by a prereflective feeling, how do we judge the Christian God to be the center of our ontological reality? Why not the God of Islam? There is no consensus in scholarship or between religious bodies. Furthermore, as more and more cultures interact, we discover religions which do not seem to be converging upon a single truth. The East and West conceive of God, existence, humanity, etc. in extremely different ways. In 1910, Albert Schweitzer pointed out another flaw with his The Quest of the Historical Jesus. According to Schweitzer, liberal scholarship simply backwashed its worldview onto the biblical texts. More recently, Paul Tillich has been a prominent theological liberal, grounding ‘religion’ in nontheological language and a universal truth more basic and fundamental than the biblical narrative.

Theological conservatism attempted to ground itself in cognitive objectivity, with Scottish Common Sense Realism appearing as one of its first realizations. Through inductive reasoning (and radical doubt, of course!), Scottish Common Sense Realism collected a number of irrefutable facts, systematizing them into an airtight system of thought. Theological conservatism claimed that the supernatural passed the rigor of scientific methodology based on inerrancy and prophecy: the Bible’s harmony and historical accuracy over hundreds of years, as well as its 100% fulfillment of prophecy must legitimize the supernatural occurrences. The only plausible and rational answer to all of this is an authorship by God Himself. Thus, prophecy and inerrancy become pillars of the theological conservative’s faith.

Scottish Common Sense Realism has had an enormous influence on North American Evangelical thought (see Mark Noll and George Marsden), most obviously through Princeton Theological Seminary during the 19th and early 20th centuries (see B. B. Warfield, Charles Hodge, etc.). Particularly dangerous among most Evangelicals is the ignorance of the philosophical connections to their theological systems. Rather than acknowledging a system derived from Descartes, Baconianism, etc., most Evangelicals act “as though the process of moving from the ancient biblical text to the contemporary affirmation of doctrine and theology was self-evident” (Mark Noll). The Cogito finds expression in at least four major categories: evidentialist apologetics, triumphalism, the depreciation of the historic creeds and confessions and the eclipse of the biblical narrative.

For examples of evidentialist apologetics, we can look to Charles Hodge, who claimed, “the Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science. It is his storehouse of facts; and his method of ascertaining what the Bible teaches is the same as that which the natural philosopher adopts to ascertain what nature teaches.” From Charles Finney to Jerry Falwell, a clear and distinct cause/effect relationship has been adopted within not only the ‘scientific’ world, but the world of faith. Theology, faith, revival: all have become an exact science.

Within the Cogito, Christianity also becomes highly triumphalistic. We are not content with the mere label of ‘follower of Christ’. We are Reformed or Wesleyan, liturgical or non-liturgical, amillennial or dispensationalist. Even within fairly narrow bodies of belief, we find separation: the Reformed Presbyterian vs. the Orthodox Presbyterians, etc. Because absolute truth is knowable, we stake our claim and stick to our guns. Says James K. A. Smith, “Everything is a matter of interpretation, including those interpretations described as core orthodoxy. We never have the crisp, unadorned voice of God because it is always heard and read through the lens of our finitude and situationality. Even when someone purports to deliver to us the unadorned voice of God, or “what God meant,” we always receive only someone’s interpretation which is [falsely] wearing the badge of divinity.”

The modernist notion of radical doubt applies to the historic creeds and confessions as well. While the early Reformers and most Catholics/Orthodox place(d) a large emphasis on the early ecumenical creeds, your average Protestant knows next to nothing about such creeds and would discredit their importance. Evangelicals have, for the most part, forsaken the doctrine of indefectibility. Sola scriptura hardly implies nuda scriptura, but it is to this end that the Evangelicals have arrived.

Finally, theology under the auspice of the Cogito eclipses the biblical narrative. A realistic narrative is understandable, yet exists on many paradoxical and seemingly contradictory levels. It is never wholly understood, but compels us nonetheless with its ring of authenticity. It mirrors our own perception of the world, effectively placing us within its story (or giving us a story of our own). Within the method of the Cogito, however, the Bible is reduced to a “storehouse of data from which timeless and immutable principles are drawn … it seeks to qualify and quantify” (Greer).

We have now observed the way in which the Enlightenment ideal of ‘absolute truth’ has affected Christian thought and theology in the past several hundred years. The second ‘call to postmodernism,’ which we will examine next, is the ecumenical imperative. Note that I (Dan) do not necessarily believe we must wholly forsake modernism or embrace a different school of thought to think Biblically. To me, the thought of fully subscribing to a single school of philosophical thought is quite dangerous. Yet all the same, I can see the tentacles of modernity grasping at me as I conceive of distanciation myself: Can’t we think of Christianity from the outside, escaping the claws of modernism, postmodernism and post-postmodernism? Probably not. I’ll try to get the next post up by the end of the weekend.

The Musings and Meditations of a ... Restless Insomniac

2005-06-01T00:04:00.000-04:00

That’s right. You don’t even want to know how much of my blog has been composed after 1AM. Probably over eighty percent. If you know me even vaguely, you are probably aware of the … dare I say … syncretistic connection of my identities as a ‘sojourning mendicant’ and ‘restless insomniac’. In my restlessness, I have found some amazing quotes concerning insomnia and sleep. I thought I’d go ahead and share them with you. And for any of you nay-sayers who claim my insomnia is merely ‘in my head’, you’ve never been in my head. I guarantee you wouldn’t survive. Interestingly enough, I can find traces of insomnia even in my pre-adolescent years. Very early in my life, I struggled with the concept of embodiment and mind-body dualism (though I had no idea such terms existed). Constantly, I would have conversations with myself in which I simply repeated, “I’m me.” I found it incredible that the mysterious “I” controlled a body: I made it speak, walk, eat, etc. And who was this “I” inside my head, anyways? Why did I happen to be embodied in a certain physical person? Was “I” just a voice in my head? But enough about the reasons I should probably go see a shrink… it’s on to the quotes about sleep and insomnia. And to any other insomniacs out there, who just can’t fall asleep minutes after hitting the pillow, I hope a few of these quotes resonate as closely with your own soul as they do with mine.

“It’s at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don’t know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J.B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that’s why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A “bad night” is not always a bad thing.”

- Brian W. Aldiss

“Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.”

- Ambrose Bierce

“Life is something that happens when you can’t get to sleep.”

- Fran Lebowitz

“Sleep – those little slices of death, how I loathe them.”

- Edgar Allen Poe

“Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience – unless they are still up.”

- Ellen Goodman

“Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.”

- Clifton Fadiman

“In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.”

- Colette

“Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.”

- James Thurber

“Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.”

- Jessamyn West

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky –
I’ve thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless…

…

Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away.
Without thee what is all the morning’s wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

William Wordsworth, “To Sleep”:

Mapping Postmodernism: The Dark Side of Absolute Truth (part 2)

2005-05-31T22:57:00.000-04:00

Today marks the second post on Robert Greer’s Mapping Postmodernism. Once again, I’m typically refraining from any of my own ideas and simply giving you a condensed version of his text. Enjoy.

The typical Evangelical Christian may struggle with the phrase, ‘dark side of absolute truth’, since absolute truth tends to be a banner we proudly bear. Christ, after all, is truth. The word of God is truth. How can we dare assert that a ‘dark side’ exists? Absolute truth in our culture, however, does not refer to Christ or the Scriptures. Rather, it refers to an encyclopedic collection of abstracted principles, understood to be timelessly valid and immutable. Furthermore, this absolute truth exists independently of culture and history. He who sees this truth assumes to possess a ‘God’s eye’ view, wherein we find this ‘dark side’. In many ways, it is this ‘dark side’ which has given rise to the postmodern agenda.

Augustine of Hippo, to both the Catholic and Protestant, is no doubt one of the most significant and influential theologians in all of history. Because his writings reflect a theological pilgrimage, however, his thinking is often inconsistent and without complete harmony. Our interest lies in ‘his understanding of language and its relationship to truth as it corresponds to his understanding of the fall’ (Greer, 27). Language is a semiotic communication (that is, it requires the use of symbols), and this disturbed Augustine. Because symbols can only partially represent reality, it implies imperfection. Thus, Augustine asked the following questions: ‘How could semiotic communication have existed in God’s perfection prior ot the fall, and how can it exist after the completion of redemption when perfection is restored to humanity?’ (27). In The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, James K. A. Smith makes three observations:

First, as humans we cannot avoid the necessity of language: for the soul’s desire and intentions to be known, from the infant to the adult, language is necessary. For God, who knows us to our innermost, semiotic communication is not necessary. Second, as words are by their vary nature symbolic, they can only partially express the reality they are describing and are thus imperfect. One only needs to mention the word ‘love’, and the disparity between language, symbol and reality becomes quite obvious. The four consecutive letters, l – o – v – e, merely point to a reality of the abstract concept of love; they do not embody or encapsulate love. Because of the gap between signa (sign) and res (reality), distortion is inevitable. Thus, the hearer must interpret a word, in order for any sense of reality to be expressed. Third, Augustine believed communication prior to the fall must have been without words; some sort of mental telepathy. Furthermore, at the future eschaton, after the fullness of redemption, words will once again be eliminated:

Man as he labors on the earth, that is, as he has become dried up by his sins, has need of divine teaching from human words, like rain from the clouds. However, such knowledge will be destroyed. For while seeking our food, we see now in an enigma, as in a cloud, but then we will see face to face, when the whole face of our earth will be watered by the interior springs of water springing up. (Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos libri)

Augustine also believed that this wordless, signless communication occasionally occurs now, in those brief, ecstatic moments when the Lord speaks to us (without the use of language). Thus, the redemption releases us from the temporal into an immediate and eternal communing with God. We exist outside of time. Here, Smith disagrees with Augustine; we are created beings by nature and will always be finite. Thus, omnipresence and omniscience are attributes which man can never obtain (nor was he designed to!). Smith argues that ‘Augustine’s understanding of redemption jeopardizes “the central distinction between Creator and creature”’ (29). Language and interpretation were part of God’s originally “very good” creation. Semiotic communication is not only a necessary part of life; it is a God-given gift. Thus, according to Smith, Augustine’s notion of absolute truth is rooted in Hellenistic thought, not the Scriptures.

The next great step in the evolution of absolute truth occurred in 1637 with Descartes’ statement, cogito ergo sum. This was discussed in the ‘modernism’ section of the last post on mapping postmodernism. Through the use of radical doubt, Descartes intended to do away with prejudice, preconceptions, cultural influences, etc. He explained, “Since I wished to devote myself solely to the search for truth, I thought it necessary to do the very opposite and reject as if absolutely false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I was left believing anything that was entirely indubitable” (Discourse 6:31). Doubt was a means, absolute truth the end. Though Descartes admitted his method of radical doubt followed by a linear series of inferences revealed a sufficient rather than complete knowledge, he still believed he could attain universal knowledge.

Thus began the Enlightenment. By the end of the French Revolution (1789), Descartes’ methodology had become the cultural norm for rational thought in the West. Descartes’ system is not without its problems, of course. Primarily, the problem is this: “Is it actually possible for a human being to radically doubt everything, divest oneself of the influences of culture and the historical moment where one is located, and from that intellectual posture to think” (Greer, 32)?

Most current philosophers believe Descartes’ notion of radical doubt is essentially paralyzing. Once one is within a state of radical doubt, one is in a “dazed stupor”, wholly unable to philosophize. Further, Descartes himself did not radically doubt as much as he supposed; the syntax, grammar, and meaning of the French or Latin languages was never called into question. Such a doubt would have left him unable to express coherent thoughts and arrive at his methodology of rational thinking. Rather than thinking critically, Descartes actually thought uncritically: claiming to be divorced from culture and history, Descartes’ quest for absolute truth began within a cultural and historical context.

Augustine and Descartes chose two different paths in an attempt to overcome human finitude and gain a God’s eye perspective and a subsequent understanding of absolute truth. In both cases, human finitude was viewed, categorically, as bad. The impossible struggle for the finite to attain the infinite produced the philosophical turmoil of the last several centuries.

In my next post, I’ll finish up the chapter on absolute truth by discussing the resultant theological liberalism and conservatism (both rooted in the modern cogito).

A Sneak Preview...

2005-05-27T01:31:00.000-04:00

While I regret to inform you of my inability to complete any posts the last few days, I CAN give you a sneak preview of what's to come. I'm partially finished with my next post in the 'Mapping Postmodernism' series, on 'The Dark Side of Absolute Truth'. I'm also trying to post a bit on Thomas Kuhn and how his 'postmodern' view of science should influence the current evolution vs. ID debate. Finally, I recently read an interesting book called 'Dating with Integrity' by John Holzmann. I plan to post fairly thoroughly on his philosophy of dating. As a further sneak preview (which will hopefully entice you into reading my long and boring post-to-come), I present you with a conversation I had with Keith Kurak this very evening, after describing Holzmann's take on dating.

Dan: If you just start whoring yourself out to a different girl every night and they don't realize you subscribe to Holzmann's 'Dating with Integrity' philosophy, you'll probably get in a lot of trouble.

Keith: that sounds like a great premise for a movie

(begin Keith's movie script, as sent over AIM)

"It was a different girl every night for Dan Kearns.
Until they all caught on..."

"Unfortunately, his little charade is coming to an end."

"But, is it really a charade?"

Girl 1: "Could he just be really dumb?"

Girl 2: "Or really forgetful?"

Dan: "No, it's just that...I subscribe to Holzmann's Dating with Integrity
philosophy"

(sound of screeching record)

"This summer, Dan's got the hots for his sister. And his other
sister. And his other sister."

Some dude: "But they're not REALLY sisters, are they?"

Dan: "No, no, really...they are."

Dan: "But I don't really have the hots for them."

"Can Dan date all of them but love none? Find out in "I dated a guy who
dated lots of other girls...BUT NOT REALLY!!!"

(end Keith's movie script, as sent over AIM)

Dan: Wow

Dan: If I had a million dollars, I'd give you at least 100,000

Keith: theoretically, that's pretty generous of you

So there you have it, folks. How can you NOT be thoroughly intrigued and curious about this post-to-come?

Luther on the New Testament

2005-05-23T14:03:00.000-04:00

I’ve been reading a lot of Luther recently, and stumbled upon his Preface to the German Translation of the New Testament. In 1522, Luther published the New Testament in German vulgar, and the following is a portion from his preface.

“Which are the true and noblest books of the New Testament? From all
this you can now judge all the books and decide among them which are the
best. John’s Gospel and St. Paul’s epistles, especially that to the
Romans, and St. Peter’s first epistle are the true kernel and marrow of all the
books. They ought properly to be the foremost books, and it would be
advisable for every Christian to read them first and most, and by daily reading
to make them as much his own as his daily bread. For in them you do not
find many works and miracles of Christ described, but you do find depicted in
masterly fashion how faith in Christ overcomes sin, death, and hell, and gives
life, righteousness, and salvation. This is the real nature of the gospel,
as you have heard.

If I had to do without one or the other – either the works or the
preaching of Christ – I would rather do without the works than without His
preaching. For the works do not help me, but His words give life, as He
himself says [John 6:63]. Now John writes very little about the works of
Christ, but very much about His preaching, while the other evangelists write
much about His works and little about His preaching. Therefore John’s
Gospel is the one, fine, true and chief gospel, and is far, far to be preferred
over the other three and placed high above them. So, too, the epistles of
St. Paul and St. Peter far surpass the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and
Luke.

In a word St. John’s Gospel and his first epistle, St. Paul’s epistles,
especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and St. Peter’s first epistle are
the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvatory
for you to know, even if you were never to see or hear any other book or
doctrine. Therefore St James’ epistle is really an epistle of straw,
compared to these others, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about
it. But more of this in the other prefaces…”

Luther makes a strong and bold statement; not only admonishing us to focus on St. John’s Gospel and St. Paul’s epistles, but also diminishing the importance of St. James, “for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it [my emphasis]”. I will say far more about this preface when I get to the end of my ‘Mapping Postmodernism’ blogs, for it points towards something very important: as much as Protestants would like to claim for themselves sola scriptura, they more often claim sola mei sententia: only my interpretation. For Luther, the heart of the Gospel is Romans. For the Catholics, the heart of the Gospel is in James. Both can claim, “sola scriptura.” Here we see once again the troubling effects of a modernist view of absolute truth. Perhaps a postmodern context does allow the beginnings of a more effective ecumenism… more on this when I can get to it.

Band of Brothers

2005-05-22T00:25:00.000-04:00

Last night, I saw the final episode of HBO’s ten part series, ‘Band of Brothers’. We’ve been getting the DVDs from NetFlix for the last couple months. If you haven’t seen them yet, make the effort. It would probably do this country a world of good if all the young folks watched the series. Major Winters actually lives in Hershey and some adults I know are friends of his. It would be interesting to have a conversation with him someday. Just a few thoughts that have been brewing in my head since I started the series…

If America ever entered another ‘World War’ (which I honestly don’t think is possible, given our current weapons technology) and I was still unmarried, I’m fairly sure I’d join the armed forces as a medic. I know my eyesight would keep me from being a soldier (maybe a medic as well, I don’t know) and I don’t know if I could shoot someone. Also, if the war wasn’t as clear-cut as World War II (and it doesn’t seem like they will be anymore), I’d probably struggle immensely with a sense of justice in what I was doing if I was the man pulling the trigger. But if I was the man to bandage and sew up the wounded, whether the wounded happened to be a soldier, a civilian, an enemy, I don’t think I’d have the same ethical dilemmas. For as messed up as American can be sometimes, Band of Brothers restored a fairly deep sense of loyalty in me. I’d be willing to die for a number of principles this country stands behind.

I should be more tolerant of the elderly and pay them greater respect. Here I am at twenty; what did I do last night? Played some poker and shot the breeze with a couple friends. What were many of our senior citizens doing at twenty? Shooting other twenty-somethings. Watching their closest friends die; one here, another there. So when I sense that bit of derision in an elder’s demeanor or tone, maybe it’s because they held a dying man in their arms at my age. Maybe it’s because they’ve seen hell, lived through it, and wondered why they ended up the ‘lucky’ ones.

Funny how we talk about living in an age of terror these days. I don’t know what it’s like to have food stamps or rationed items. I don’t know what it’s like to pray every night that our boys in Europe and the Pacific obtain victory, ensuring my very freedom and basic liberties. I’ve never run for a bomb shelter, hung blankets over my windows, or woken to find my town a bombed out shamble.

No truly great endeavor man can embark upon will be clean, clear-cut and simple. You take the dross with the gold, no questions asked (or with a thousand questions asked, like Job, without the answers you longed for). Yes, there were injustices and atrocities committed against ‘innocents’ or ‘civilians’ during World War II. Yes, soldiers at times acted out of enraged passions or anger, rather than a sense of justice. But in the end, this is not enough to condemn war. Just as the hateful words I know will come out of my mouth someday are not enough to condemn marriage or the fathering of children. Life is not clean or neat… and neither are the things worth killing and dying for.

The Circle Is Now Complete

2005-05-19T03:14:00.000-04:00

Well, I just got back from a midnight premiere of Star Wars III. While I won't give an in-depth review of the movie, I will say this... it IS worth seeing. Sure, there's the awful dialog and some poor acting and some hideously scripted stretches to create some sort of consistency and continuity between the six movies. But this movie displays a lot more depth (and darkness) than the last two.

I guess this does mark the end of an era for myself and many of my generation, though. The circle is now complete.

Mapping Postmodernism: A Survey of Christian Options (Part 1)

2005-05-17T02:37:00.000-04:00

Postmodernism is a topic that needs to be addressed by the church, as much of our culture is already thoroughly postmodern. Furthermore, I would argue that it needs to be addressed on a philosophical level. Within the church and parachurch organizations, postmodernism has become both a bragging right and an anathema. Unfortunately, it seems to me as though the term ‘postmodern’ typically means ‘contemporary’ or ‘progressive’ in these contexts, not truly ‘postmodern’ in a philosophical sense. Additionally, postmodernism now represents a broad spectrum of ideas, and to simply ‘be postmodern’ or ‘not be postmodern’ necessitates further clarification. Finally, we would do well to analyze the long-term ramifications of a postmodern rubric; while it may seem idyllic for the time being, could it not, like modernity in its Post-Enlightenment state, generate problems unforeseen by its founders?

Thus today’s post is the first of a series on a book I’ve recently read by Robert Greer. You can read a review of the book or purchase it by clicking on the title/link. I’ve read several books on postmodernism, by both Christians and non-Christians, by folks arguing for it and against it. Greer “warns that being merely for or against postmodernism is inadequate.” Can I get an amen? Over the next few weeks, I’ll essentially compress the chapters of his book into brief(ish) summaries for the non-philosophically literate (it’s like the Reader’s Digest version of the book, harkening back to the infamous ‘Peloponnesian War’ by Daniel Kearns… not Thucydides). Finally, I hope to throw up a bit of analysis myself, as I’m not 100% on board with Greer, but far closer than I’ve felt with any other contemporary philosopher/theologian up to this point. Hopefully we can also get some interesting dialog going on in the comments section of the posts. So without further ado, a quick look at four major philosophical paradigms: premodernism, modernism, existentialism, and postmodernism.

Premodernism:

In many ways, premodernism is the hardest paradigm to define, because it is an endeavor very similar to apophatic theology; it is far easier to say what it is not than what it is. A premodernist worldview perceives the world as an undifferentiated whole; life is a holistic blend into a singular perception of truth. Knowledge focuses on understanding individual agendas and the working out/results of those agendas. Rationale is derived from historical orientation, not an objective ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. The premodernists lived by a contractual quid pro quo, which we see in much of the Old Testament and New Testament: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Ex. 20:2). The Israelites were obligated to God because of what He had done for them. Hence, a very clear, black and white dualism appears: you are either for x or against x. There is no gray line, no middle ground. ‘A man cannot serve two masters’. Rather than perceiving God or morality in an altruistic or ‘objective’ light, the Israelites simply perceived Him as God, their Lord and Master. Thus, incidents such as the genocide committed against other nations, Rahab’s lie, David’s deception of Abimelech, etc. find simple resolve: all were done in service of the Lord. ‘Abide in me, and I in you’. The focus here is on loyalty, allegiance, obligations, and blessings. And in all of these cases, the focus is on a person (or God), not ideals or objective truths. As far as we can tell, there is no development of a ‘scientific method’ at this point in time.

Note that the Hellenistic philosophers (primarily Plato and Aristotle) are better understood as proto-modern than premodern. Rather than subscribing to a quid pro quo understanding of virtue, these Greek philosophers strove for an understanding of moral rectitude independent of premodern thought. Paul is probably referring to proto-modernist thought when he writes of the “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Col. 2:8). Likewise, John also seems to condemn this abstraction as the “spirit of antichrist” (1 John 4:1-4). Still, by the early patristic period, individuals such as Clement of Alexandria were integrating proto-modern thought into Christianity, even considering Plato and Aristotle as proto-Christians. A position of compromise, which condemned and anathematized some aspects of Hellenistic thought while embracing others, can be found in Augustine.

Modernism:

Two facets of modernism demonstrate a sharp move away from premodern thought. The first is the notion of distanciation, the second is the notion of radical doubt. The position of distanciation emphasizes the divide between subject and object. By detaching one’s self from surroundings, cultural influences, personal feelings, etc., one arrives at a truly objective viewpoint. Thus, definitive and absolute conclusions can be made by the ‘impartial spectator’. Additionally, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) introduces the notion of radical doubt. By doubting everything, we create a blank slate from which we can proceed without the need to distrust our conclusions. These epistemological moves have essentially become the only way to think (rationally) in Western culture until recent decades.

In Post-Enlightenment history, both the conservative and liberal traditions of the Western church have essentially embraced the modernist agenda. Liberalism sought for a knowledge that is absolutely and universally felt to be true from an intuitive perspective. Conservatism sought to determine absolute and universal truth from a cognitive orientation. In both cases, distanciation and radical doubt were embraced, with the result of an elevation of the human mind/rationality and an incredible spirit of triumphalism. By the 20th century, however, absolute truth proved to be more elusive than we originally thought. As one can see by the splintering of church denominations and frustrated ecumenical efforts, a modernist perspective within the church has proven to be destructive. Within the academia, Nietzche, Hedigger, Barth, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, etc. began a systematic criticism of modernism, giving birth to existentialism and postmodernism.

Existentialism:

Like modernism, existential thought rejects the influence of culture or history in the shaping of truth. But unlike modernism, the context for this truth search is one wherein universal/absolute truth is not thought to exist. Existentialism insists that a voyage beginning with the Cogito ends in an experience of the world ‘as it is’, not with an acquisition of universal/absolute truth. After all, a criterionless foundation of radical doubt should lead to criterionless random, pragmatic behavior; not universally valid criteria (absolute truth). Notions of right and wrong are absent in existential thought, as these notions are based upon the existence of universal truths. As a result, existentialism is a highly individualistic affair. Much of its momentum has been lost, however, due to (among other issues) a doubt about whether it is truly possible to think aculturally and ahistorically. Though existentialism may, in fact, be more consistent with the cogito¸ its conclusions are difficult to live by (or profess).

Postmodernism:

Postmodernism has emerged out of existentialism’s inadequacies. Both emerge moving in a post-Cogito direction, wherein universal/absolute truth is replaced by a localized understanding, but postmodernism is rooted in language and culture, where existentialism is grounded in the emptiness of one’s mind. For the postmodernist, the ‘blank slate’ of radical doubt is an absurdity. Within one’s mind exists language (words, syntax, and grammar) and this language is inherently rooted in a specific culture. As languages differ, so the identification and organization of thoughts generated by language also differ. Thus, postmodernism asserts that language is prior to knowledge. Since it is impossible to think apart from your language (and the context of that language), no single metanarrative can exist. Rather, a plethora of metanarratives serve as cultural lenses in an antirealist system (since the epistemological gap between the phenomena and noumena cannot be bridged). While this sounds a bit Kantian, postmodernism is content to settle for phenomenology alone, without grasping the noumena. This avoidance of reality leads to a strange conclusion: “any proposition is true – or true enough, or as true as anything gets – if it comports with one’s feeling about, or ‘perceptions’ of, something” (George F. Will). Where premodernism focused on quid pro quo and where modernism and existentialism focused on the subject, postmodernism focuses on language. As language changes and evolves, so must one’s own ‘language truth’. Interestingly enough, this does not force postmodernism to be an amoral system (like existentialism), but rather a non-universal and mutable system of morality.

Within postmodernism, two major subcategories exist: constructionism and deconstructionism. Wittgenstein championed the constructionist system, which “argues for the formation of systems of truth defined by the interaction of various cultures and language groups that make up our world” (Greer). Deconstructionism, on the other hand, assumes that even within an individual language system, the erratic state of flux deconstructs and reshapes definitions and understandings of truth on a constant and consistent basis. Thus, even to a specific culture, truth lacks a coherent definition. Derrida is typically credited as the premier deconstructionist philosopher.

Enjoy… in the next post of this series, I’ll begin talking about absolute truth and the ecumenical imperative.

Making a Name for Myself

2005-05-11T00:03:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I sat around a campfire with a bunch of folks from Kairos for an end of the year ‘Kairos Kloseout Kamp fire’ (that’s Derek’s forced alliteration, not mine). A number of seniors shared some ‘words of wisdom’ (including my Dad… who will be graduating from St. John’s this Sunday!). Over the past few weeks, I’ve attended quite a number of events at which seniors have reflected on the past and spoken of the future. As I transition from Cleveland back to Hershey, I’ve done quite a bit of reflection myself. And the future, of course, is always on my mind to some extent or another. It’s amusing (in a pathetic sort of way, generally) to read my old journals. The summer before I left for college and the first few weeks of college, I can see an immense, internal struggle in my writings. I was so determined to make a name for myself, yet painfully aware of the pride and selfish ambition behind this determination.

Three years have passed. I’ve changed majors more times than I changed the sheets on my bed. My future plans have swung from getting a PhD in electrical/audio engineering from MIT to attending seminary and being a stuff old professor. And even as I contemplate professorship, I feel my mindset shifting. At first, I wanted to write; to make an impact on the greater world, to make a name for myself. Now, I feel as though my love for campus ministry is pushing me in the direction of being a professor and active on a college campus first, an author second. So often, you hear at matriculation or graduation events long and eloquent speeches about how a small group of talented young men and women can change the world. We are poised at the beginning of adulthood, we are the chosen generation to revolutionize this planet. That’s all well and good, I suppose, and I’m not denying that God would have us exert an influence on our culture. But I need to remind myself that this influence begins from the bottom up, with the people I love and the people who love me.

A few days ago, I watched ‘Shadowlands’ for the first time, a semi-biographical film on the later years of C.S. Lewis. As a renowned author and professor, Lewis had effectively created a tightly knit world for himself, one in which he could not be hurt. He was known as an author, not a person. He was untouchable. And unable to touch. Sometimes I fear ending up the same way (with the added benefit of not being ‘renowned’). It’s part of the reason I moved home and part of the reason I’m seriously looking towards building a family and home of my own. You see, I’d still like to ‘make a name for myself’ on some level. But not as a professor, theologian, author or musician. Rather, I hope to make a name for myself as a son, as a friend, as a member of my local church and community and perhaps someday as a husband, father and grandfather.

It’s good to be back in Hershey; an environment that feels like Lake Wobegon compared to Cleveland. As I drive around central Pennsylvania, especially close to dusk, I find myself driving a bit slower. Life, after all, passes a bit slower here at home. And as I pass farm after farm, field after field, the shadows of the trees absurdly elongated by the setting sun, the clay earth blazing like the brazen bricks of an oven, I feel a strange sense of ownership. Though the land is not my own, I feel as though I have made an investment here. As I drove to Elizabethtown from Wilkes-Barre last weekend, taking back roads past Lebanon, Annville, and Palmyra, I made a promise to myself. Sacrifice the higher paying job, the bigger name publisher, the more highly ranked university, the newer car, the nicer neighborhood if it means being able to spend more time with one’s family and friends. Let the ‘successfulness’ of my life be measured among those whom I cared about, not by the numbers of books I published or dollars I earned. Sometimes I make life a lot more complicated than it is. A home, a family, a church, a community. And a God who permeates every bit of it. This is life. And how blessed we are to be promised to ‘have life and have it abundantly.’

Lauren Winner on Real Sex and Why True Love Needs to Wait for More Than Just Sex

2005-05-09T22:08:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the lack of posts these past few weeks. Life was a bit tumultuous, between finishing everything up in Cleveland and driving back and forth between school and Hershey in order to get all my books and musical instruments back home. After a day of rearranging furniture, I’m finally settling into my (new) room back at 275 Dogwood Drive. My recording studio at Steinruck is also up and running, so I’m spending a decent amount of time over there. Ultimate season has also arrived; with pick-up with the Kairos folks starting up Sunday evenings, league play with the Central Pennsylvania Ultimate Club on Monday and Tuesday, pick-up with Living Hope on Thursday and the occasional weekend tournament. This leaves minimal time for the computer (I’m not even setting one up in my room; and my computer at Steinruck doesn’t have internet access), but I’m still going to try to update the blog on a weekly basis (just don’t expect to see me on AIM).

About a week and a half ago, I attended Lauren Winner’s ‘Real Sex’ book promotion at Hearts and Minds bookstore in Dallastown. In addition to ‘Real Sex’, I’ve also read her second book, ‘Mudhouse Sabbath’ (I have yet to read ‘Girl Meets God’). I would wholeheartedly place her book, ‘Real Sex’, on a must-read list for college age Christians. For a number of reasons, which I will discuss below, it’s a message our generation needs to hear. At the same time, however, I was somewhat disappointed with the book and her discussion at Hearts and Minds, for reasons I will also discuss.

Lauren’s goal for ‘Real Sex’ is to get at the bottom of this mysterious practice known as ‘chastity’. Is it simply an old-fashioned word to be archived along with the tattered hand-me-downs of Christian culture? Is it possible in 21st century America? Is it how we dress, how we speak, how far we go with our significant other? And at the root of a correct understanding of chastity must lie a correct understanding of sex. What is real sex? Not the sex advertised by the soft-porn ads on your television set, not the hushed up activity your parents must have secretly been involved in at some point (unless you’re adopted, like me…), but the full-blown, legitimate, God-given gift? She discusses a number of false perspectives, from the purely carnal and erotic focus on the best possible orgasm as the end of sex to the ascetic, neo-Platonist judgment of sex as inherently base or immoral (because it focuses on the physical self). Furthermore, she delves into ‘lies the church tells you’. Pre-marital sex doesn’t always fell bad; you aren’t always racked by guilt a week later. If it always left you feeling hollow, unloved and illegitimate, why do so many (both Christians and non-Christians) actively participate in this immoral practice?

Lauren focuses on rediscovering sex within its proper context (thus allowing us to rediscover chastity). This not only involves the married man and woman; it involves the church community. It is the church, after all, who endows the married couple with the privilege of proper sexual relations through the sacrament of marriage. She writes briefly on the issue of birth control, emphasizing that we must at least be aware of the effect it has had on our current view of sexuality. Thus, even though we might not necessarily be required to take the hard road of no contraception, we should practice stewardship and intentionality within a marriage. She holds no punches, striking upon topics like pornography and masturbation. All in all, I found myself nodding in agreement throughout much of the book and find it unnecessary to delve too far into the positive aspects of ‘Real Sex’, because you should just go out and buy/read it. Conversely, you could buy it from Borders, read it in a night, and return it the next day. They don’t even ask any questions!

Where, then, does my criticism lie? Primarily, it is in the limited scope of the book, not the presence of ‘incorrect’ content. ‘Half a truth is a whole lie’, they say. I don’t buy it, though it rests heavily on whether ‘half a truth’ is speaking in terms of quality or quantity, substance or essence. At any rate, here is my major concern with Lauren: Though she desires to revive a balanced perspective on chastity through a balanced perspective on sex, she fails to properly address the non-sexual, non-carnal aspects of chastity in addition to the co-extensive properties of sexuality which necessarily involve more than just our bodies, but our heart, mind and spirit.

Lauren uses a number of stunning statistics, displaying the number of Christians engaging in pre-marital sex. Specifically, she uses numbers gathered from a survey of teens who participated in the ‘True Love Waits’ campaigns. For those of you who might not be familiar, a number of years ago (perhaps even currently, I’m speaking from experience right now), there was an enormous sweep of ‘True Love Waits’ campaigns, around the same time as Joshua Harris’ book, ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’. Essentially, you signed a card promising to yourself and God that you would save yourself (that is, abstain from sexual intercourse) for your future spouse. I believe I have a card, signed in 8th grade, somewhere upstairs in my desk. As it turns out, the contracts have been rendered essentially useless, with the number of ‘True Love Waits’ members engaging in pre-marital sex at about the same frequency as non-members. Lauren points to a misunderstanding of real sex and a failure to make a commitment to a community and not just yourself and God as the primary reasons ‘True Love Waits’ proved ineffective. To a certain extent, I agree.

But here’s my own, personal opinion. True love needs to wait for more than just sexual intercourse. True love is not simply the sexual indulgence following the marriage of a man and woman. True love involves one’s heart, will and mind just as much (and possibly more) than it involves ones genitalia. ‘True Love Waits’ puts forth a fairly basic message: Keep your pants zipped and you, your future spouse and God will all be much happier. ‘Real Sex’ takes it back a few steps: With a proper understanding of sex, glorifying God and grace, chastity is possible. While Winner’s message is obviously a better one, the focus is still primarily a carnal one. By singling out the sexual aspect of a relationship between a young man and woman, the church has effectively ignored the emotional and spiritual entanglements we experience.

I’d like to analyze two situations. In the first, Jack and Jill begin with every intention to stay physically pure. They follow the advice of the church and dress modestly, avoid dangerous situations (being alone in a bedroom, etc.) and pray diligently for the strength to flee temptation. But at the same time, they allow their emotional and spiritual selves to quickly and haphazardly infuse. As boyfriend and girlfriend, they become one another’s best friend, closest companion, wisest counselor and deepest comfort. Before long, with emotional and spiritual intimacy an assumed reality, physical intimacy of some sort is bound to follow. Not solely because of raging hormones but also because we, as humans, desire to exist in some sort of equilibrium. If your emotional and spiritual self is putting out, the physical self cannot help but capitulate.

In the second situation, Jack and Jill begin with the same intentions, etc., and miraculously keep from indulging in physical intimacy. All the same, one finds the other incompatible and an emotional, painful break-up tears them apart for months. Back in Jr. High, I remember Sue Rooke giving us a book called something like ‘What Hollywood Won’t Tell You About Love and Sex’, at the same time we signed the ‘True Love Waits’ cards. The book (which, in fact, was probably detrimental to my growth as a young Christian man for a number of reasons) spoke of sexual intercourse as the glue holding a man and woman together (the two shall become on flesh). The more you indulge in sexual intercourse, especially the premarital type, the less adhesive this ‘glue’ becomes, and the less likely a successful, ‘glued together’ marriage will become. While I don’t necessarily disagree, I would add that there is an emotional and spiritual glue as well; not merely a sexual one. While the first situation might seem a ‘worse’ situation than the latter, neither reflects a Biblical model in my mind (and the latter might have more incipient consequences in the long run).

As our young people are reminded time and time again to keep strict physical limits in their dating relationships, could it not be that they are over-indulging in the emotional and spiritual aspects of these relationships instead? And could this not result in either the eventual, exasperated caving in with regards to physical intimacy, or perhaps even worse, a complete isolation of the physical self from the emotional and spiritual self?

It is undeniable that contraception, the sexual revolution and ‘evolving’ sexual moral standards have separated the sexual act from both marriage and childbirth, to the detriment of the family structure and the promotion of divorce. But the assault on the family and the rampant divorce rates might have just as much to do with the casual way we ‘date’ or ‘court’, the seemingly innocent way we form and break emotional attachments apart from the devotion and commitment a marriage requires. Thus, when the wedding day rolls around for an enormous percentage of Christian couples, perhaps they have saved their bodies for one another, but not their hearts or souls. And when the going gets rough, there is no distinct correlation or connection between emotional/spiritual intimacy and the covenant of marriage, so a divorce it is.

For those of you who might be saying, ‘You’re going a little overboard with all of this,’ let me put forth a hypothetical situation. Let’s say I marry ‘Girl X’. But ten years down the road, I’m confiding in ‘Girl Y’. It is ‘Girl Y’ who I would consider my closest companion, my shoulder to cry upon, etc., regardless of whether we share the same bed or not. Would you not accuse me of being unfaithful to my wife?

There’s no doubt about it; attempting to practice ‘emotional’ or ‘spiritual’ chastity (what the Bible might call ‘purity of conduct’) is a much more elusive and esoteric concept than the sexual type (which is hard enough by itself). All the same, the Biblical mandate to ‘treat young women like sisters, in all purity’ seems to speak of more than just sexual purity. So while I’m highly appreciative of Lauren Winner’s book and recommend it to all of my peers, I also fear it falls a bit short of the holistic view she’s striving for. To be honest, aside from arranged marriage or something along those lines, I’m quite unsure of how to find resolve in a culture of dating/courting and what I see as a Biblical mandate to keep not only your pants, but to some extent your heart and soul zipped up until saying, “I do.” Perhaps that’s why no one wants to touch the subject. I have far more to ramble about, but I’ll let this sit online for a few days before adding anything else. Plus, I’m not sure how much of my thoughts I want to make publicly available. Feel free to comment, folks… not enough people ever do.

A Humorous Interruption...

2005-04-13T00:21:00.000-04:00

For all the 'deep', 'thoughtful', 'philosophical', or 'theological' (I use these terms loosely) posts I throw up here, let's be honest. I'm still a mere 20 years young... and part of college is just plain ol' having a good laugh. Before our leadership team meeting for Chi Alpha, Neil went downstairs to give a textbook to someone. I was checking my e-mail on his computer and solving a probability problem for Andrew, when Neil's sister IMed him. At first, I was just going to ignore it and put up an away message. But as I was looking through Neil's 'saved' away messages, a certain one caught my eye: 'Sun Bathing'. I don't know why Neil has this away message. But I decided to capitalize. The following conversation is between myself (impersonating Neil) and his younger sister... some would say I'm being cruel... but... it's just so hilarious. So for all you folks at Case that have heard about the infamous conversation, here it is, word for word.

Neil: What's up?
Emily: not so much how bout u
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Auto response from Neil: Sun Bathing...
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Emily: ehhh sorry to break it to you but its too late for that
Neil: andrew and i bought a tanning machine on ebay
Neil: so i can sunbathe whenever i want
Emily: shut up you did not'
Emily: ???????
Neil: yeah, well, we got money from our hall council
Neil: so it's for our whole floor
Neil: but they put it in our room
Emily: wait you serioulsy have a tanning bed???
Neil: yeah, the only bad thing is that it's really noisy... and takes up a ton of our room
Neil: we're not exactly sure where it's going to go this summer. maybe you could come up here and try it out, before i leave
Emily: ummm bring it here!
Emily: ill charge my friends to use it
Neil: that could work
Emily: how much did it cost?
Neil: but only if i get a cut
Emily: i wouldnt seriously charge them- theyd be like uhh your cheap
Emily: so once again- dad wants to know- WHY did you guys buy a tanning bed
Emily: ?????
Neil: it was really cheap, only 400 dollars
Neil: and like i said, hall council paid for most of it
Emily: do you actually go in it?
Neil: as in, tan in it?
Emily: yeah retard that's what its for right?
Neil: it's kinda comfy... sometimes i do circuits homework in there
Neil: but yeah
Neil: it's not super comfortable, i can only do it for about 15 minutes at a time
Emily: WAIT YOU GO TANNING????
Emily: neil- as in i fry when im in the sun and get terrible tanning marks??
Neil: THAT'S WHAT IT'S FOR RETARD
Emily: wait is this like late april fools?
Neil: no, i'll take a picture of myself with my digital camera and send it to you later tonight
Neil: i'm a good five shades darker than normal
Emily: im so confused
Emily: you know thats bad for you right?
Neil: you think i'll get skin cancer?
Neil: you should see andrew; he's pretty much black.
Emily: WHY IS HE TANNIG??? hes asian????
Emily: you know you cant go more than once a day right?
Neil: yeah, sure
Emily: but why is andrew going tanning?
Neil: andrew wants to be more tan than his g/f when he gets back to houston
Emily: weird
Emily: so you shoudl seriously bring it here over the summer- between you and andrew we live closest and all my friends can use it for prom
Neil: the bad part is that lots of girls always want to be in here using it
Neil: well, i guess that's both bad and good.
Emily: i want you to take a pic of the tanning bed and yourself and email it to me
Emily: cause righ tnow i dont know if i beleive you
Emily: and tell your friends you will store it over the summer
Neil: ok. do you want andrew in the picture as well?
Neil: and maybe some of the girls from our floor?
Emily: hahha uhhh iguess
Emily: nahhh thats alright
Emily: you're scaring me
Neil: i have to go to a meeting now
Neil: bye
Emily: cya
Neil: i'll send you the picture later
Emily: k

A Visit to St. James...

2005-04-11T18:07:00.000-04:00

Rather randomly, I ended up going to Toronto on Friday. Our University Program Board was sponsoring the trip (50 bucks for the bus ride and two nights in a hotel), a friend bought a ticket and couldn't go, and I was selected as her replacement. Anyways, one of the highlights of the trip was attending the Choral Eucharist at the Cathedral Church of St. James. St. James is essentially the Westminster Abbey of Toronto. The architecture is breath-taking, the boy's choir world-renowned. The liturgy and music were both beautiful, and save an interesting interruption, the service flowed brilliantly. Several interesting observations:

About 65% of the congregation appeared to be over the age of 50.
About 85% of the congregation appeared to be over the age of 30.
Less than 10% of the congregation appeared to be families (with children).
About 85% of the congregation over the age of 25 was white.
About 40% of the congregation between the ages of 18-25 was white.
The first reading of Scripture was done by a South African man, and the Gospeller was a Vietnamese or Cambodian (I'm guessing) woman.

While my generation was poorly represented, I was surprised at the ethnic distribution. Perhaps this is because the church draws largely from the University of Toronto. I'd say about 40% were white, 25% were Asian, 20% were Indian/Middle Eastern, and 15% were black. As I've visited quite a number of churches around Cleveland during the past few months, the trend seems to be fairly universal: my generation is flocking to the contemporary, extemporaneous, non-denominational, often charismatic churches. The time-tested, traditional churches and sanctuaries are becoming mere relics. Obviously, there are pros and cons to both. I'm simply left wondering if churches like St. James, or the Anglican-Catholic church I occasionally visit here in Cleveland, or even the Orthodox Presbyterian churches and the more liturgical/traditional Protestant churches, in their historical garb, will be museum exhibits in a few more generations. I remember a lecturer on pomo saying that he believes it will bring about a revival of tradition, a 'looking backward' to our roots. So perhaps I'm 'ahead of my time' in some sense, and my generation's focus will shift from the 'emergent' church to a rediscovery and reformulation of a more historical church and church theology. I have seen a fairly intentional shift in contemporary worship music towards the rediscovery of hymns and songs with more serious lyrical depth, perhaps an indicative premonition of a greater movement to come. I'm not going to place any bets, but I know which outcome I'm going to work toward...

You're a Good Man, Daniel Kearns

2005-04-11T15:14:00.000-04:00

As the last few weeks of my time in Cleveland quickly expire, I can't help but reflect upon the 'goals' I set out for myself in a journal nearly three years ago. One of the first involved 'providing a strong Christian witness to any unsaved friends I meet and evangelizing when opportunity arises.'

A number of weeks ago, a friend of mine posted on her livejournal concerning the public's tendency to polarize individuals as Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. In response to her frustration with such narrow views of political or comprehensive worldviews, I posted the following comment:

"You're certainly not alone in your "tirade" of sorts. Most students on this campus know me to be a Christian, and quite often this places me (in their eyes, at least) within a very tight-knit framework. I must be a homophobic, evolution-bashing, intolerant Republican intent upon George W. Bush wiping out any semblance of a non-Western, non-Christian culture. Indeed, it seems as though all Christians must be caricatured as either the religious Right or the extreme leftists who have abandoned theology and tradition, while still attempting to retain the title of 'Christian'.

Personally, I no longer have any desire to consider myself a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal. My worldview (Biblical Christianity) cannot be wholly contained by any single title, nor will an interpretation of that title ever be wholly accurate or satisfying. It's strange; as post-modernity focuses on community where modernity focused on the individual, it seems as though the world is trying to press each one of us into a neat, no loose ends party of sorts. We are no longer characterized by who we are; we are characterized by the community in which we pledge our support. Thus, for the sake of community, we pry the price of individuality. I wn't ran anymore... but believe me, I could :-P"

She responded with the following:

"Thanks Dan. I must say I have quite a bit of respect for your viewpoints. I remember reading something in your journal last semester, and I don't even remember the exact content, that just struck me as really intelligent and sincere. As far as the title of "Christian" goes, I think you're one of the best examples of it I've come across. And considering where I've grown up, that's saying something :) I've always known you to have very strong convictions, yet you've never, ever tried to force them on me, or anyone else to my knowledge. I'm sure we don't agree on everything, but the fact that you've respected the difference of opinion we have is awesome. Thanks for quite possibly the best comment I could've expected from this post :)"

I can't help but wonder... if 'quite a bit of respect' is all I've educed from my unsaved friends during my time at college, have I completely and utterly failed our call to evangelism? If, at the end of the day, I'm no more than a good guy and a good example of a Christian, have I obeyed the Great Commission? To be sure, I do not want to measure my success as a witness by the number of non-Christians who have come to Christ in the past three years. But we call ourselves 'Evangelicals'. A part of our supposed 'distinctiveness' is not merely theological, but practical and visible. It seems to me that most 'Evangelicals' take one of two routes: the St. Francis 'Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words' avenue, and the Campus Crusade-ish head-on approach. Perhaps a small subset of us have in some ways taken a supposed amalgamation of these avenues, but in a very impractical and in some sense, impersonal fashion. At this point, I would recommend reading Dad's post (and the subsequent comments), 'On Mirrors and the Spirit of the Age'. We wax about past experiences, we titillate the intellect with questions of motivation, intentionality, etc. I ask myself question after question: "How do I make a happy person realize their need for a Savior?" "How do I make Christ relevant in a culture that has relativized morals, ethics and truth itself?"

The tagline to one of my favorite Stavesacre songs reads, 'Oh how I want to be an offense, an unsettling presence in this life'. In Matthew 13, 15, Mark 6, John 6, etc. Christ offends with His message. Perhaps the most poignant response comes to His own disciples!

'When many of this disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, "Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?"' (John 6:60-62)

Paul speaks of the 'offense of the cross' in Galatians 5, as if its very efficacy is derived from its offensiveness. He also speaks of Christ crucified as a 'stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles' (1 Cor. 1:23). The biggest hindrance during my time at Case, in terms of evangelism to non-Christian peers, deals primarily with the incredibly powerful desire to be relevant. We seek relevance as individuals, we seek for a relevant message to our culture. While none of us would ever dare to say, 'Christ is not the Way for this unsaved friend,' does our attitude not often reflect the thought, 'This isn't the right tool, this isn't the right time'?

Interestingly enough, I met with Chi Alpha's faculty advisor last Thursday, amidst meditating on this very topic. Our advisor is not involved in our ministry, he simply signs a form once a year and wishes us well. Thursday was actually the first time I had ever met him. As I updated him on Chi Alpha, he gave me a bit of advice. Don't plan any meetings. Don't plan any outreaches. Don't plan any events, period. Just get together and pray, then obey God's direction. Don't feel the need to reach out to individuals; they will come to you. Sorry, but I can't take your advice. In our desire to be relevant, we as Evangelicals have lost our saltiness. As Modernists, we have desired to create a rational argument for Christianity; making atheism the foolish, offensive option. As pomos, we have desired to create a narrative that is relevant and feels good to individuals around us. As Christians, we should preach Christ and Him crucified. Practically, I'm still not sure how we should go about it; but the first steps seem to include rediscovering the offense of our message and putting it forth intentionally.

P.S. I know that I used some sweeping generalizations, with regards to the terms 'Evangelicals', Christians, Modernists, pomos, etc. I'm sure you can list dozens of individuals within the former categories who are swimming against the current. But that's my point; I'm looking at trends and currents, not the commendable exceptions (since I'm more likely to unknowingly fall in line with the former than the latter).

Welcome, David

2005-04-06T13:02:00.000-04:00

My older brother, David, joined the blogging community this week, under the name of 'The Learned Fool". I'm not the only Kearns that loves antinomy and paradox, you see (or perhaps I don't love it; I simply embrace it wholeheartedly as a crucial part of life). He'll primarily be writing film reviews. Dave is not quite as discriminate as I in the volume and nature of films he watches, so I would not be surprised by reviews of everything from terrible zombie movies to artsy indie films. Enjoy.

Genocide in Sudan

2005-03-31T18:09:00.000-05:00

The title link will take you to an article in World Magazine on the genocide in Sudan. Thirty years from now, will our children come out of a theater after watching the equivalent of a 'Hotel Sudan' and stare at us accusingly? Or can we goad our government and the U.N. into action, putting down in the history books another 'better late than never' account of intervention?

There is nothing new under the sun... but seriously, what's up with my generation?

2005-03-30T14:18:00.000-05:00

To be sure, we are familiar with the verse. And along with many of the profound statements of the Bible, this one triggers a somewhat antinomical response: On the one hand, we are thoroughly depressed. And on the other hand, we are comforted and even rejoice. I post on this subject simply because it helped me greatly in my attempts to sort through this whole blogging business. As I mentioned before, I am often compelled (by pride) to be profound in both the large and small things of life. I view this compulsion as the big, hairy, intellectual, overdeveloped brother of the desire to always tell a joke and make others laugh. At any rate, it interfered with my blogging. Especially as I read the blogs and journals/magazines of all those fancy schmancy philosophers, theologians, etc. out there, I had to wonder... what do I have to contribute? Then comes the simple reminder... there is nothing new under the sun. Again, the paradoxical reaction. On the one hand, I am assuaged; perhaps my words are just as important as Neuhaus' or Kuchiner's or Stegall's or Dad's. On the other hand, the bar falls just as heavily on this man as any other.

I recall Rich Mullins saying something along these lines: “We try awfully hard to impress God these days. I don’t think it’s very easy to impress God. God, it would seem to me, is very little impressed by the hollow attempts of man…” Similarly, we try rather hard to impress one another. The blog is a strange medium for me: it’s more than my journal, littered with thousands of incomplete thoughts… yet hardly something one would try to ‘publish’ (in a more formal sense of the word). I doubt very much I’m posting anything that isn’t on some other individual’s blog (in both a general, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ sense and a far more specific ‘I’m rambling about article xyz’ sense.). So why write at all?

The answer seems to be a snazzy pomo term, being thrown around in various circles across the board. Community. As I contemplated my readership, I came to a strong conclusion. I pray that a balance exist; that readers peruse my writings for two purposes: the purpose of exposing themselves to potentially new ideas or perspectives and the purpose of being involved in a community of like-minded (and not so like-minded) individuals. If you’re looking for profundity, you should probably check out the links in my blog, or better yet, the Bible. But if you want community, perhaps this is a link (no pun intended). Which brings me to another strange aspect of this blogging business. The internet has made us a ‘global community’, to be sure, but it has simultaneously decentralized our personal communities. Thus, within a few clicks of the mouse, I can read the blog of a New Zealander who might just happen to be struggling with the same issues I am in the midst of.

Neat, huh?

Or potentially destructive.

I wasn’t planning on transitioning into a new topic, but now that my blog is a bit ‘looser’, I might as well go with the flow. To bring about a bit of closure to the first topic of this blog, knowing ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ is actually an encouragement to start blogging again. For my purpose must lie elsewhere, as must the expectations of my readers.

So where were we… ahh yes, the decentralization of community. We’ll get back there in a moment, after getting a little personal.

As those critical ‘young adult’ years of 18-21 quickly approach their end, I’ve had another one of those paradoxical realizations (by the way, I’ve learned that if a realization doesn’t have some element of paradox or antinomy in it, it’s probably not a very worthwhile realization). And on a side note, I believe I’ve confused some of science-minded Case friends; antimony or stibnite can be found on your periodic table. Antinomy is a contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or inferences correctly drawn from such principles.

I have lived an extremely privileged, yet stunted and discontinuous life.

As Ben Folds once put it:

“Y’all don’t know what it’s like,
Being male middle class and white.
It’s a bitch, if you don’t believe
Listen up to my new CD.”

The exact reasons (and results) of this ‘stunted’ and ‘discontinuous’ life are not the same as many of my peers who have endured the divorce of their parents, coming home from school to an empty house, drugs, sex, abuse, etc. Nonetheless, our decentralized community, it seems to me, cannot help but touch the lives of everyone in my generation. Indeed, the privilege of being young, male, middle class and white in 21st century America is simultaneously a curse. Before I go on, please note that I am not griping. I thank God daily for His sovereign plan: my adoption from South Korea, my family in Hershey, etc. But in an effort to understand my own generation and make my generation understandable to others, this curse must be made known.

I’ll begin on a more specific level, then broaden these thoughts to the more universal experience of my generation. Growing up as ‘a Kearns boy’ has been a strange phenomenon from Day 1. My family is highly intelligent, highly educated and highly inquisitive. I remember Lauren once telling me how much her boyfriends in high school hated eating dinner at our house, because of the strange nature of discussion around the dinner table. (Naively enough, I actually thought we were a fairly ‘normal’ family until I arrived at college). As teenagers, we were all well thought of; indeed, I was a kind of ‘poster child’ at my old youth group. This is not to say much of myself, however, as my old youth group was essentially a somewhat religious high school atmosphere, chock full of the usual cliques: jocks, skaters, nerds, band geeks, cheerleaders, etc. While I led worship, I knew of several ‘friends’ who headed in the direction of the back parking lot to smoke weed.

Strangely enough, this accelerated growth, mostly a result of the greatest blessing in my life (Mom and Dad) has taken a toll on me which I only recently began to discover in its true form. I always knew I was different from the other kids. At first, I attributed this to my adoption. I always liked hanging out with folks quite a bit older than me. I suppose I arrogantly attributed that to intelligence, or something of the sort. And I’ve always felt nearly completely out of place, save three environments: time with my family, time in the wilderness (alone) and time behind a piano. I’ve attributed that to a plethora of reasons… just look at back entries of my blog/xanga and you’ll probably discover a few.

But I think I might have finally nailed it down. I’ve been growing up too fast. And as the perilous years of young adulthood set in, I find myself to be much like the child who has just begun to enter the awkward years of puberty. For as the proportions of his body accelerate at different speeds, sending his motor skills, emotional stability, etc. out of wack, so I find myself misbalanced. I’m expected to think like a wizened adult, lead like a trained minister, live like a saint. And yet, I can only feel and love like a twenty-year-old, with a twenty-year-old’s meager experiences. I can only understand with a mind that has been functioning (on a high level) for a few years. And as this mind and other specific aspects of my self desire to surge on towards further maturity, other parts of my self are left, spinning their wheels in hopelessness.

Do you know how hard it is to grow up with Joseph Kearns as your father? And I’m not blaming you for anything here, Dad. It’s just that… it gave me the privilege, the opportunity to skip a lot of worthless rabbit trails and dead-end roads (theologically, intellectually, perhaps even emotionally), but simultaneously took away years of experience, years of discovering things for themselves. And while I probably would have come up empty, the experiences themselves may have resulted in a slightly more balanced Daniel Kearns.

I often think of myself as emotionally stunted or deprived. While this was a forced deprivation for many years, in the last few it has been involuntary. Perhaps I am not so much stunted or deprived, in terms of my emotions, but simply underdeveloped. Is it not true that the self can only grow so quickly? Try as I might, I will still only have the experiences of a twenty-year-old tomorrow. Try as I might, I will still only have known deep love from one set of individuals… my family. Try as I might, I will still only have deeply loved one set of individuals… my family.

The moment I became interested in the Puritans, I simply bought up as many books as I could find and began reading. The moment I became interested in philosophy, I likewise began to devour its greatest minds. But excluding the mind, excluding the computer-like input.output functionality of the self, we are not quick learners. Since coming to college, I’ve missed playing classical piano. Now that I have a bit more free time, I’ve determined to set aside about five hours a week and begin to learn Chopin’s Ballade in G minor, op. 23. For any of you familiar with classical music, this is one of the hardest piano pieces out there. Life, it seems, is far more like learning this piece of music than devouring a textbook. One could argue, of course, that a true masterpiece such as Jonathan Edwards’ ‘Freedom of the Will’ cannot be properly understood in one reading, cannot be properly understood by a twenty-year-old mind, cannot be properly understood outside of a highly constructed context. Thus, cannot life be analogous to such a book? I would argue that growing up is far more like Chopin, because even at fifteen, I could have read Edwards. Assuredly, I would not have plunged his depths (I still haven’t!), but the words would flow together in coherence. Staring at certain movements of Chopin, I cannot immediately gain this coherence. As my eyes trace the dancing, skipping notes, a tune begins to form in my head. But to sight-read Chopin versus hearing Rubinstein play Chopin is a far cry from a fifteen-year-old reading Edwards versus a forty-year-old reading Edwards.

Thus, as my parents sharpened my mind, my intellect, even my character and ‘maturity’, not all could be quickened. I can hardly claim myself to be the normative case in 21st century middle class white America, so why do I use myself as an example? The normative and universal aspect of my life is not those specific attributes which were sharpened; but rather the simple fact that my generation is afflicted with a strange malaise: nearly all of us have been accelerated (sometimes by choice, sometimes by no choice at all) in some aspects of our lives, while other aspects are left behind in seeming immaturity.

I see this in those friends of mine who have chosen to involve themselves in sex, drugs and alcohol, most beginning in high school. While they push their bodies and emotions toward adulthood, at the end of the day, they are still mere teenagers or young adults in need of their parents or someone to love them unconditionally.

I see this in friends whose parents are divorced; the eldest son or daughter forced to become a parent figure, forced to ‘grow up’ (in some aspects) a whole lot faster than I.

I see this in friends (and myself) who always attended church, always attended youth group, always ‘knew their Bible’ and arrive at college only to find a whole new ball game.

We are a generation of quick fixes, not natural maturation. We have the 1-minute button on the microwave (heck, we have the microwave itself). We don’t need to learn how to spell; we have Webster.com or spell check. We don’t need think; Google can do that for us.

Even the blogging community itself can easily disrupt one’s natural maturation. Rather than thinking out issues for myself, I read a dozen blogs and choose the best one as my ‘answer’ to the ‘questions’ I never really asked. Life becomes a series of multiple choice ‘fill in the box’ questions, not a series of free essays. As any historians of science would quickly attest, hundreds of the very same discoveries and inventions (from calculus to atomic theories) occurred across the globe for millennia. Creativity, even genius was not a once and done, patented event. There is nothing new under the sun. So my generation becomes one of strict consumerism.

Perhaps this also explains the sharp increase of cutting, depression and suicide. As young adulthood arrives and most of my generation doesn’t recognize the disjointed and discontinuous maturation process they have experience, much less know how to reconcile it, they resort to complete apathy or a need to push themselves towards a sensationalism that doesn’t require slow maturation (cutting). In 12 Monkeys, Bruce Willis travels back and forth through time and ends up quite confused at points. He says to the scientists, “I don’t think the human mind is meant to exist in two… what do you call them… dimensions?” To some extent, due to dozens of factors from bad parenting (or complete lack thereof), ghettos, the internet, quick fixes, lax morals, etc. I believe my generation is existing in several different dimensions, a variety of different threads of maturation.

And apparently we’re pissed off about it too… or at least that’s what all the punk bands say :-P

To be honest, I’ve always considered myself quite distant from my own generation. But perhaps the twenty-year-old girl down the street on welfare, with two unwanted children, physical scars from her father, and emotional scars from every boy she’s ever met says the same thing. I’ve committed two travesties today. A couple years ago, I would have never come to this point. I’ve re-inserted myself into the rubric of ‘my generation’, and done it in a thoroughly post-modern way. We’re similar to each other because we’re dissimilar to each other. And we’re dissimilar to each other because we’re similar to each other.

I’ll end with two ‘lights’ at the end of the tunnel; one seems to be a fairly common pomo answer to the dilemma of our society (though perhaps I’m approaching it from a slightly new angle), the other I haven’t thought through very much.

We would be foolish, it seems to me, if our efforts were spent on trying to mature all aspects of ourselves and others (I’m thinking of future children, if I have them) at a constant rate. For even if this disjointed, discontinuous maturation is the hallmark of our generation, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’, and I’m sure many older adults reading this post will say that they, too, participated to some extent in this oddity. We would be wise, it seems to me, if our efforts were spent on reclaiming private communities. By private, I do not mean exclusive; simply non-global. Communities of children, young adults and elders. Communities in which older men and women can watch me grow; grow as a mind, grow as an emotional being, grow as a leader. Obviously, I speak of the church.

We are time-bent creatures, perplexed by the almost time-defying process of growing up. But we have been given a timeless institution, a petra, a cornerstone. With Christ as the head and the church as the body, can we not restore a community in which our young men and women can grow up with some level of consistency? Of course, a large problem here involves the fact that this maturation disease seems to have afflicted our churches as well. Under the guise of ‘maturation’, some churches have accelerated towards cliffs I dare not approach. This post is getting extremely long and the thoughts are freely flowing in my head… so I will add a few more comments, then leave the rest to future posts.

Our focus on creating ‘comprehensive’ communities seem a bit misdirected. My generation endeavors to create churches in which white, black, Hispanic and Asians are welcome… yet they only seek those ages 18-30. My generation endeavors to create non-confessional churches involving members from variegated theological backgrounds… not being able to tolerate the thought of tradition. In leading a Christian fellowship group on Case’s campus and interacting significantly with the leaders and members of other groups, this subject has become more practical to me. Does Chi Alpha want to cover all the bases InterVarsity or FCA or Koinonia covers? No. Each group will always appeal to a certain subset of individuals. There will be exceptions, of course, but my generation seems to find this practice a hideous one. We cannot hope to create true communities if we continue to globalize, universalize and subsequently sterilize them. As I said, more on this later… I’m sure I’ll get some nasty comments about my ineffectual, lazy, arrogant and exclusive worldview.

The second light at the end of the tunnel? Perhaps this is an apt metaphor, for perhaps the reconciliation of our disjointed maturation is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and pressing on. My sister, Lauren, married Keith slightly more than a year ago. At the wedding rehearsal dinner, I met two of their best friends, who had married several months earlier. Tim spoke about their first few months of marriage. He spoke of the way in which he and his fiancée thought they were prepared for marriage. Surprise. We’re never ready for life. Let’s stop kidding ourselves and get on with it.

By nature, I want to understand before I commit. I want to master before I indulge. Perhaps this is part of the reason my maturation has been so disjointed. Experience is the greatest teacher of them all. Someday, a larger number of these kinks, these discontinuities, these disjointed threads of life will reconcile with one another. The question is, what kind of man will I be at that point? Will my ‘reconciliation’ involve the abandonment of certain parts of self, or will I allow experience to be my instructor and embrace the good, the bad and the ugly? Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

As this long, rambling post comes to an end, I can also truly say it is more than mere thoughts on a page. In many ways, a number of my recent decisions (taking a break from college, focusing on campus ministry, wanting to spend far more time with my family, opening myself up to some sort of relationship with a girl, etc.) are related very closely to these realizations. All this talk about ‘growing up’ also reminds me of a great G. K Chesterton quote. In some ways, perhaps, ‘growing up’ is not the phrase I’ve been meaning to use all this time.

“A child kicks its 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… 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 that 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 and old, and our Father is younger than we are.”

Perhaps our souls would grow up by growing young. Maybe my generation needs to get busy growing young if they ever hope to be reconciled to themselves. Hope you enjoyed the post.

A bit of humor...

2005-03-29T13:03:00.000-05:00

Since my blog tends to be serious all the time, I thought I'd infuse it with a little humor (since in real life, I'm a funny guy... right? RIGHT!?). During the aforementioned Chi Alpha retreat, we played a game called 'telephone charades', or something along those lines. When it's your team's turn to play, you all line up facing in a single direction. The proctor whispers a word or phrase to the person in the back of the line. Without any noise (from any party), that person then acts out the word or phrase to the person in front of him/her. After the second person thinks they 'got it', they in turn tap the next person on the shoulder and act the word/phrase out to him/her. This goes on and on until the final participant. They have to guess what the word/phrase is, after given a person/place/thing type of clue. Now, this being a Christian retreat, Andrew and Emily tried to com up with some 'Biblical' words/phrases... There was Noah, David, baptism, etc.

When it came my turn to be the first to act, however, things took a turn for the worse. I'm still not sure if this was done to me intentionally or not. As I leaned down to get the word from Emily, I swear I heard the word 'conception'. My first thought? Maybe I heard it wrong. Perhaps she said concession, which would be impossible to act out, but slightly less humiliating. Or perhaps she said confession and I can don my Catholic hat. But no, it was conception. At this point, I had to make a crucial decision. Do I cling tightly to any dignity, honor and respectability I might have accumulated over the years at Case or do I win? This dilemma is made all the more complicated by the fact that even if I were to act out conception in a stupendous fashion, the ball could be dropped by other participants on our team. In the end, I decided I didn't have very much dignity, honor or respect to lose; and being a somewhat competitive person, I hate wussing out and losing games. So I took one for the team.

Conception is a very specific term, not to be confused with giving birth, pregnancy, reproduction, or sexual relations, etc. How, in the span of a few moments, could I enact this word without the use of my voice? The answer was clear. Imprint (what a terrible thought) the concept of sex on your teammate (which had, just HAD to be a girl), then move on to a biological rendition of conception; after all, she IS a nursing major.

A moment of hesitation.

Another moment of hesitation.

Nervous laughter from the other teams.

I began by lying down on the ground, in a masculine pose. I then rolled over and assumed a feminine look. I rolled back to become the 'guy' again... and... made a motion I don't intend to repeat until I get married. By now, the other teams are half gasping, half dying from laughter, and altogether unsure of a few things: Whether I should be excommunicated as president of Chi Alpha, whether Andrew and Emily know what the word 'discriminate' means, and whether the word is what they all think it is at the moment. Somewhat, humiliated, I jumped up and silenced the crowd. Thus begins the biological 'acting'.

Note the look of incredulous awe on my face (or perhaps nausea… at any rate, it’s not confidence) as I act out the miracle of conception. All I could think of was the children’s movie… I believe it was Beethoven (or some terrible sequel), in which the father tries to explain pregnancy to his daughter. He speaks of the sperm, swimming about, and of one ‘Olympic swimmer’ sperm that manages to reach the prize. So against all fears, against all doubts, against the uproarious laughter in the background, my sperm reached the egg and as the egg multiplied (I began to put up my fingers… first 1, then 2, then 4, then 8…), I prayed that ‘conception’ was made all too clear to Abby. And it was. In fact, it was all too clear to Andrew. Who whispered to Emily something along the lines of, “What did you tell Dan to act out!?!?!” In her defense, Emily showed Andrew the paper – “Conception!”

And there’s the rub, folks. As Emily came running towards me, shrieking, “Stop Dan!!!!”, I realized I was given a good half of the phrase. Somewhere between Andrew and Emily, ‘the immaculate conception’ became ‘conception’.

But I am comforted. Perhaps some day, many moons from now, I will be required to explain conception to a deaf person, or perform in a birds and the bees silent film. And I will be ready. Oh yes, I will be ready.

Silence Is Golden

2005-03-29T01:53:00.000-05:00

In the Spring Semester, Chi Alpha (a Christian group on my campus) typically holds what we like to call a 'silent retreat'. Rather than bringing in a speaker or something of the sort, we spend a majority of the weekend by ourselves, in solitude. Later, we have an opportunity to share impressions we received, etc. The following is essentially an expansion of what I shared at the retreat.

About a week before the retreat, as I sent out the weekly Chi Alpha e-mail, I reminded students to bring their Bibles, a journal, perhaps another Christian book, etc., which are all typically useful during the times of silence and solitude. In addition to 'fasting' from my own blog and the blogging community as a whole, I was also attempting to spend less personal time reading and writing and more time meditating. Thus, as I approached the silent retreat, a single thought kept echoing in my ears: "The last thing you need to weigh yourself down with on this retreat is a book, a journal... perhaps even the Bible." So I embarked on a bold journey: spend four hours in solitude without writing down a single thought or reading a single sentence. For some, perhaps, this would be no challenge. But I've begun to realize my incessant (sinful) search for profundity. And this generally involves reading a lot, then spewing out my thoughts like vomit into my journal, in the typically hopeless endeavor of finding a shred of 'genius'.

Instead, I spent the time in silence, most of it kneeling, recalling to mind various verses, prayers and songs... but mostly just reflecting and meditating; not on myself, which is the normal subject my mind dwells upon, but the Lord in His general and specific interactions with mankind and myself. I would not be so bold as to say, 'The Lord spoke to me' (after all, such statements require more qualification than I'm willing to provide at the moment), but I was certainly left with a distinct impression.

The end of a relationship with God is just that; a relationship with God.

I am quite often a 'means to an end' individual. I observe much in life (correctly or incorrectly, as the case may be) with a teleological lens and often brush over much by encapsulating it as a 'means' to some greater end. Undergraduate education (I use the second word loosely), for instance, seems to be a mere 'means' to pursuing an actual academic career in my case. Dangerously, I think I often apply this general rubric to such disparate subjects as my relationship with God. Thus, in perceiving my relationship as a means, my focus is on the end. And what is this end? Conforming to Christ's image, one day being removed from even the last vestiges of sin, worshipping Him unceasingly, etc. But in my solitude, God reminded me that all of those 'ends' are essentially 'means' in a circular paradox. We are conformed to Christ's image as a means to the greater end of enjoying a more perfect relationship with Him. He will cleanse us from sin at Paradise's gate so we can enjoy unfettered fellowship with Him. We worship Him unceasingly that our relationship with Him might be made known. Thus, the means and the end are one and the same. We relate to God that we might have a relationship with God.

What does this mean, practically? It means that my focus must often shift from knowledge to experience (and I speak here not of sensationalism...). After communing with God, I tend to ask myself, 'What did you learn?', not 'Do you know Him?' Subconsciously, I would judge the 'worth' of time spent meditating, reading the Word, praying, etc. by the number of profound thoughts or revelations it produced. My mind also drifted to the older married adults I know, specifically my parents. I think it's safe to assume that most men and women who have been married many decades no longer wake up thinking, "I need to learn more about my spouse to further our relationship," (as us young folks often engage in with significant others, no doubt), but rather, "As I work and enjoy life beside my spouse, our relationship is naturally furthered."

Though knowledge is undoubtedly a pillar holding up my relationship with God, it is not alone. The pillars of intimacy and experience, of carrying out His work in His presence, share an equal load. It is somewhat deceptive, I believe, to speak of our 'quiet times' with God, as if the rest of our day is conducted outside of His presence. To be sure, an increasing knowledge of God is conducive to an increasing relationship with God (of this, I need no reminder). But an increading knowledge of God must never be equated with a relationship with God; for mere knowledge is never enough. As the slave attends his master, as the bride attends her groom, so shall I endeavor to attend my Savior; not viewing my relationship with Him as a means to some greater end, nor banishing myself to the limited relationship of knowledge without true knowing, understanding without true appreciation.

Two rabbit trails that recently popped into my head concerning this topic:

How should the statement, "The end of a relationship with God is just that; a relationship with God" influence my relationships with others (especially along the lines of spouse, if that day ever arrives)? For in one sense, a relationship with another person cannot be self-contained like my relationship with God; one could even argue, "The end of a relationship with person x is a relationship with God."

Also, perhaps we put forth the wrong ideology by labelling our retreat a 'silent' retreat. A 'solitudinous' (I think I just made up a word) retreat might be both more accurate and conducive to what we're after: communion with God. Because trust me, there were times when I wanted to burst out in song or verse and resisted, thinking I'd be setting a bad example on a 'silent' retreat... But in the 'solitude' of my backpacking last summer, you can rest assured I spent a lot of time making noise.

Revisit and Revaluate

2005-03-29T00:56:00.000-05:00

Several months ago, I vowed to write more often on this blog, vouchsafing this 'resolution' as an exception to my typical animosity towards those petty promises made around the new year. As it turns out, I should have kept my big mouth shut. As you may have noticed, it's been nearly two months since my last post. Almost a dozen posts (some just started, others nearly finished) are currently wasting electrons as 'saved drafts'. Ironically, one of the last of these (dated a month ago) laments my lack of posts and promises a rigorous return to the blogging world. I declare this 'ironic', because it precedes a different promise, one I made to myself later that day. I swore to refrain from both posting on my own blog and reading the blogs of others for a month. Since I tend to be an extremist, I opted once again for the 'all or nothing' route. So why the hiatus? I'll explain both the first, somewhat unintentional month, followed by the second, intentional one.

Somewhere along the line, I began to lose my vision for the purpose of this blog. When I started to post online (then, as a xanga), my purpose was essentially three-fold (and I present it in primary, secondary and tertiary importance). Firstly, to keep my parents 'in the know' not merely about what I happened to be doing in a given week, but what I happened to be thinking about. Secondly, to engage my Christian friends in potentially fruitful discussion over topics we seldom engage over. Finally, I hoped my blog would be in some sense an evangelistic tool, whether it served as a medium over which to engage non-Christians, or simply a sincere, faithful account of a young man's journey along the Christian faith. The first purpose tended to get accomplished. The second and third got a bit lost, with a new element of 'readership' being simultaneously introduced. To be honest, the dream of engaging peers at Case through my blog, or articles linked from my blog, was never seriously actualized. While I know many Case students read the posts, most were reticent to comment, and most comments came in the form of 'interesting' or 'thanks', where I was hoping for 'are you sure about that?' or 'my struggle is more along the lines of x, y and z'. The third purpose of the blog is a bit hard to quantify or qualify. There was the random debate about predestination (I never can seem to escape them), the random e-mails (some anonymous) I'd get from non-Christians... but I'll address that in another post. At any rate, I felt on some level that the blog was a lost cause; perhaps I'd be better off simply writing e-mails to my parents.

While this was happening, however, a strange phenomenon began to occur. Primarily because of moving to blogspot and being connected to Dad, Derek Melleby, etc., my readership began to increase exponentially. At this point, I also began to realize that some of these readers included adults (and serious thinkers at that), not just the run of the mill, perusing college student (not that you can't be serious thinkers too... ha... I don't know how much irony and/or sarcasm I want to deliver that sentence with...). Here, the medium of the blog quickly became paralyzing. I suddenly felt compelled to write in order to impress. Where there was no profundity, there could be no post! Hence, the dozen or so unfinished posts rotting away in cyberspace. Thus concludes the unintentional (on some level) hiatus.

Upon reflection, I realized the utter nonsense of my hesitant approach to posting. Simultaneously, I was beginning to read more and more blogs and journals; First Things and Touchstone had been staple reading for quite some time, but now The New Pantagruel and other personal blogs/blogrings (just look at the links from my father and Derek's blogs) began to consume my time. Additionally, I was continuing my normal reading of the Puritians, the crazy postmodern evangelicals, etc. Amidst this mass of informational intake, I was struck with two opposing thoughts: 'you should just post, you dope', and 'you have nothing to contribute'. The solution? Take an intentonal break from all of it; both posting on your own blog and reading others'. Now, exactly one month from that commitment, I'm back and ready to post again. I will slowly begin to unveil the thoughts I've had these past number of weeks, resulting in another stab at this blogging business, but I make no more promises. Except that my approach is going to become a bit more casual. Ironically, you, as the reader, may not find a discernible difference. But to be sure, I, as blogger, blog with a refreshed and unhindered perspective.

Plastic Sinners, Plastic Sins

2005-02-09T14:16:00.000-05:00

The title of this post is a link to an article from the online journal, 'The New Pantagruel.' Stegall argues that we should not be shocked by the lack of virtue in America as we pick up the newspaper or turn on the television. After all, total depravity has been with us since the moment of Adam and Eve's Fall. Rather, we should be shocked when the 'virtue of vice' is replaced by plastic sin and plastic sinners. While the article (which is short and very readable.. so... please read it) gives you a better idea of these contrasting sinful behaviors, I'll try to summarize. The virtuous vice is the bold, blatant sin committed with the attitude of 'real vice or no vice at all.' These are not the petty sins, but those done in such a manner that Stegall believes they contain the 'seeds of redemption.' He uses King David and St. Augustine as examples of those who sinned boldly; those who were plagued by a virtuous vice. They are soul and gut-wrenching, the kinds of sin that drive us to our knees in tearful repentance.

Plastic sin, on the other hand, focuses on comfort. It fulfills our mechanical needs without touching our soul. Stegall speaks of slot machines, Clinton's sex scandal, etc. It is the plastic sins and plastic sinners which dominate American culture, as pornography, privatized sins, and an 'as long as I don't get caught' spirit sweep us off our feet. His point?

"There is a long Christian tradition affirming the value to society of bold, strong sins... We need virtuous vice and bold sinners. Such vice affirms our humanity and tends to either burn a person up, or burn him into a saint... Martin Luther understood this when he wrote in a letter to Philip Melanchthon, “Be a sinner, and sin boldly.” We need sins that affirm us as spiritual beings in all of our fallenness. Therefore sinner, sin boldly, but, as Luther also admonished, pray boldly too. For you are human after all."

Not the kind of message you'd expect to hear on a Sunday morning. Perhaps, "plastic sins lead to bolder sins and both must be forsaken," but surely not an endorsement of these bold sins, these virtuous vices. To be honest, I haven't thought about the topic long enough to decidedly place myself in Stegall's camp. In his support, I have seen the sly, conniving 'comfort' sins deaden the conscience of myself and others. In my persistent struggles with the sins of pride, lust, masturbation, indecent thoughts and attitudes, anger, frustration, etc., I am often most disturbed by my lack of conviction. When that word slips in public, when you've suddenly caused someone to cry because of your indiscretions, there rises an unavoidable guilt and conviction. But when all is privatized, all is in your mind or behind closed doors, sin can often seem without consequence; our 'cosmic treason' (as R.C. Sproul would say) a thing to be forgotten or shrugged away. It is my generation, after all, that sees downloading mp3s as an amoral practice and pornography an unquestioned part of life. 21st century America cannot hope to escape Stegall's label of plastic sinners, up to their necks in plastic sins.

So what do we make of these plastic sins? Is it even a legitimate category? For right now, I'll give Stegall the benefit of the doubt as I contemplate his division. It is, perhaps, our plastic sins which reveal best of all the depravity of man. They are the remorseless, apathetic outcries of a senseless, pitiful creature. In that sense, however, should they not be an equally driving force towards the 'bold prayer' Stegall speaks of? Where the virtuous vice of David could be seen as a perversion, a misdirection of that which still contains the 'seeds of redemption', plastic sins are an utter abandonment of the beauty inherent in this universe. It is the lurking beauty of the virtous vice, perhaps, the glimpse of a forgotten dream which drives a sinner to repentance. But should not the utter banality and ugliness of the plastic sin do the same?

Perhaps it would be of greater use to view Stegall's 'plastic sins' and 'virtuous vices' as descriptive elements of sin, rather than distinct categories. His use of the word 'virtuous' fails to fit very pleasingly within my framework, but here is what I'm getting at: if we truly realize the significance of our sin, can our soul escape being touched? Rather than avoiding the 'plastic sins' and endorsing the 'bold' ones, perhaps we had better re-evaluate the 'sinfulness of sin' (as John Owen would put it). In that light, we cannot hide behind the facade of a comfort sin, serving but the mechanistic side of man. Instead, all sin should be a soul-wrenching experience of nailing Christ on the cross time and time again.

Stegall's article is a profound one, causing me to rethink the nature and implications of our sin. His approach may be a bit romantic, however, lacking a bit of perspective on both ends of the spectrum. So let us sin boldly, but with a fuller understanding of the sinfulness of sin. And in this endeavor, let all sin point us to the sinless Son of God, hanging on the cross.

P.S. I'd like to ask Mr. Stegall if the Fall consisted of a plastic sin or a virtuous vice.

Weep or Rejoice?

2005-02-07T15:58:00.000-05:00

A week or so ago, I received the following e-mail.

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students:

Case Western Reserve University is committed to respecting all members of the campus community, and because of this institution's support of diversity, I am pleased to announce the creation of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) resource website.

This website is designed to provide information and support to the entire campus community, with a special emphasis on issues of tolerance. It provides links to faculty and student social organizations, as well as details about Case's domestic partner policies. There also is information about the latest news and research regarding LGBT issues and concerns.

We continually strive to make the campus environment welcoming for everyone. For more information, please visit the LGBT website at http://www.case.edu/provost/lgbt, and see the news release below.

Sincerely,

Lynn Singer

CLEVELAND - Case Western Reserve University's Office of the President and the Provost has launched a new website specifically for current and prospective LGBT campus faculty, staff, students, alums, and their allies.

An official launch party is scheduled for Thursday, March 3, in Thwing Atrium during the Provost's Hour, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Case already offers domestic partner benefits and campus support. The site deepens the university's commitment to encouraging and appreciating diversity on campus.

"At Case Western Reserve University, tolerance and respect in our widely diverse culture is a core value, one we celebrate in many ways," says Case president Edward M. Hundert, M.D. "We encourage and support diversity on this campus - and, in particular, our members who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. We are all privileged to live, work, and learn in this environment."

The site offers in-depth resources including links to research, campus and community organizations, information on health and wellness, political initiatives, tools for reducing and dealing with homophobia in the classroom, "coming out" support, local and national events, and national news of interest.

Case's LGBT website can be viewed at http://www.case.edu/provost/lgbt/.

After several years at a liberal university, the news was hardly surprising. The timing, however, was a bit ironic. Two weekends ago, we had our first ever Interfellowship leaders retreat. For those who might not be aware, I'll give you a bit of background about Interfellowship. When I arrived at Case as a freshman, there wasn't very extensive interaction among the Christian groups. As a whole, Case tends to be an introverted, segregated campus. Sadly, it wasn't a whole lot better, even with the Christian fellowships. Pretty soon after I arrived, the idea of a united, visible Christian body on campus became my vision and passion. God had laid the same vision and passion on the hearts of many other leaders on campus: Wayne from IV, Eric from Koinonia, Justin from UCBS, Jeff and Jordan from FCA, etc. A couple years later (and after countless absurdly long e-mails, ranging from vision statements to failed acronyms to prolonged arguments over 'social justice'), Interfellowship is thriving. I've seen it serve the incoming freshmen, as they keep in touch with one another despite joining different Christian groups. I've seen individuals from different Christian groups reach out and form strong relationships with others. Heck, if it wasn't for Interfellowship, I wouldn't have gone to Nicaragua with FCA, I wouldn't be trying to start a new group with Wayne from IV, I wouldn't look to Eric from Koinonia like a brother.

To be honest, I think the Christian community at Case probably enjoys an environment unlike the majority of secular universities. And amidst a retreat for the leaders of the different Christian groups in Interfellowship, I receive the aforementioned e-mail. I was simultaneously pulled in two somewhat distinct directions. The first part of me was a bit frustrated. The university would never dedicate a website, much less hold a lunch party, for a group like Interfellowship. Even though the Christian body on this campus is larger than the LGBT community, even though we probably exert a greater influence, even though we have united dozens upon dozens of believers from different traditions, we will never enjoy such public notoriety. Indeed, the last time I heard the Christian community mentioned was an article in the Observer, bashing Christians for trying to place ads for Bibles in the Rolling Stone. I'd put a link to the article in here, but it was so incoherent, poorly-written, and void of substance that I wouldn't want to waste your time. But rest assured that if I publicly criticized the LGBT or muslim or Jewish or feminine community in the same way, I'd be stoned.

So how do we react? It's fairly obvious that we as Christians do not receive equal treatment. Unfortunately, I think the typical reaction of the college Christian (as we react to most of life...) is a jaded, cynical apathy. We no longer have respect for our university, we no longer care what other communities around us are doing. We isolate ourselves, and enjoy commiserating or poking fun at the absurdities in life. I can hear the Christian cynic (and let me be clear... it is often me!) right now. "What do you want me to do, Dan? Go talk to Ed and tell him to make a website for Interfellowship? I'd be wasting my time, and you know it." Perhaps this is not the approach we, as Christians, are to take. After all, Christ guaranteed us from the beginning that we would be the hated, despised recipients of unequal treatment.

Do we weep or rejoice? I'm proposing that we, the fence-sitters, we, the apathetic college students, we, the 'leaders of tomorrow' who would rather lash the daily news with sarcasm than make it should do both. We should weep over a culture that has fallen this far. We should weep, not because we are demeaned, but because the God of the universe, the Christ who died on the cross, the Spirit who lives within us; this Holy Trinity is trampled on and belittled under the flags of tolerance, open-mindedness, community. And we should rejoice. For in the midst of the obvious unequal treatment, we are (knowingly or unknowingly) vindicated. Why is Christianity singled out, as the politically correct institution or entity to persecute? To be sure, a part of the blame probably rests on the Christians who bomb the abortion clinics, or the tele-evangelists, or the myriad of other, non-orthodox branches of 'visible Christianity.' But perhaps it is also because the world recognizes her true enemy. The world recognizes the power of the Church, the power of God's people. The world realizes the danger of men and women endowed with the Holy Spirit. And in these truths, we should rejoice.

Things I Love...

2005-02-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

Derek challenged Kairos to come up with a list of 50ish things we love. Dad's list is here, and Derek's list can be found here. More lists might show up on the Kairos blog. To be honest, I wish I would have completed the assignment before I read anyone's list. Most of the 'things I love' which relate to our relationship with God were taken by Dad or Derek, and I don't feel like writing them twice. Additionally, I'm horrendous at ranking, so don't interpret #47 as less loved than #24. Enjoy!

1. The God who chooses, fully aware that He would not be chosen otherwise.

2. The Christ who recognized, even as He died on the cross, that many of the onlookers would never see Him again.

3. Mom and Dad.

4. Lauren, David and John.

5. Keith, Stephen, the Hockman's and whatever future family members I end up with

6. My birthmother, whose name and face I do not know, but for whom I pray each and every day.

7. Not knowing whether my prayers will ever be answered; but resting assured that they are heard.

8. Getting lost in the tangled mess of central Pennsylvania's backroads with the windows down and in the middle of the night.

9. The firm response of a piano, as each key bows and rises beneath my touch.

10. The subtle tremors that vibrate my chest when I play the guitar.

11. Dreams. The kind you can no more stop dreaming than you can make them all come true.

12. Crossing the Susquehanna river around sunrise (that's really why I drive through the middle of the night) and realizing it will be less than half an hour until I'm home.

13. Hearing Buttercup race down the stairs every time I return to my home.

14. Ecclesiastes.

15. America's National Parks. Specifically, backpacking through them. I'm tempted to make half this list the names of specific parks or locations within those specific parks. But the true feeling of solitude, the quick, uncontrollable shiver when you first open your tent in the morning and breathe in the freshest air you'll ever experience; the sunset after sunrise after sunset, overwhelmingly beautiful to the point of not being able to take it all in... well... I'll stop now.

16. Reading Carl Sandburg aloud, by myself, while trekking across the country.

17. Climbing to the top of a mountain, alone, and watching the sun set on range after range of snow-capped peaks while slowly smoking a cigar.

18. The Sabbath.

19. Gothic architecture.

20. The music (and life) of Rich Mullins.

21. IHOP's sausage omelette, no tomatoes, with strawberry syrup on the pancakes.

22. My brothers and sisters in Chi Alpha.

23. My brothers and sisters in Interfellowship... aka the Christian body at Case.

24. Summer weeks spent with my grandparents, learning how to ride a bike and swim.

25. Reading a book by a Puritan (especially Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Watson, John Owen, and Jeremiah Burroughs).

26. Reading a book by the many men involved in the Reformation.

27. Charles Spurgeon.

28. St. Augustine.

29. A nice, sweaty, highly competitive game of ultimate frisbee.

30. The shower that follows such a game.

31. Writing in my journal for hours on end.

32. The memories of other countries I've been privileged enough to visit: Mexico, Honduras, England, Austria, Ireland, and Nicaragua.

33. A philosophical, though-provoking movie; the kind which inspires (or demands) you to read some books and get caught up in some serious conversation.

34. Lakeview Cemetery: the 285 acres of Cleveland that has kept me sane the last few years.

35. Writing letters to friends.

36. Receiving letters from friends.

37. Rachmaninoff. Everything he's written; especially Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

38. A dusty, smelly old used book store.

39. Learning how to play a new instrument.

40. Watching the sun rise after a night of reading, writing and thinking; knowing the rest of the world is sleeping while you ponder.

41. The irony of learning far more history from James Michener than all of my history classes and textbooks combined.

42. Kicking back, smoking my pipe, and shooting the breeze.

43. Listening to an album for the first time, aware that it will soon be a favorite, engrained in your mind.

44. Listening to that same album for the hundredth time, after memorizing every subtle nuance.

45. Being alone.

46. The beauty of language, especially the written word.

47. The beauty of a universe demanding language, music, visual art, and a thousand forms of expression to even begin a description...

48. Feeling as lost and directionless as Abraham, as deceptive as Jacob, as adulterous as David and as dense as Peter.

49. Knowing I'm loved just as much as the best and worst of them.

50. Falling asleep while wondering which day will be my last and longing for the moment I can worship Him freed from sin.

My very first Mass...

2005-01-31T22:31:00.000-05:00

I apologize for my lack of posts. The last couple weeks have been a bit crazy; for those of you who might not be aware, I've withdrawn from Case. I'll be spending the next few months in Cleveland, working and devoting the majority of the rest of my time to Chi Alpha, Campus Crusade (that's a new one...) and Interfellowship. I also hope to record some music and write a bit more. I'll probably post about my decision to withdraw in a few days... right now, I'm going to finish the posts I began a few weeks ago.

Over the last few months, I've become extremely interested in ecumenism. Or rather, I've begun to recognize its significance in my role as a Christian and leader. My original vision for Case's campus several years ago was, in fact, an ecumenical one. As I saw the splintered, fragmented Christian groups with very little interaction with one another, I was disappointed. I recognized fairly quickly how closed and compartmentalized this campus is; but is it not the body of Christ who should set the example of unity? Through Interfellowship, I believe we've made a lot of steps in the right direction.

The Interfellowship Leaders retreat last weekend turned out to be a fairly reflective time for me (I know, you're all saying, "That's a surprise."). As Eric recounted the formation of Interfellowship, as well as a number of its early successes and failures (ICTHUS... I still don't have any more genius ideas), I better understood my reasons for being at Case. But actually, I think I'll cut this thought off and post more about it when I talk about my withdrawal. For now, I'll move on.

My ecumenical ponderings might have begun with para-church organizations on Case's campus; but very quickly my thoughts drifted towards the greater body of Christ, typically viewed as the Church. As I've sought to educate myself in the theology of different church traditions, it recently dawned on me that I should also educate myself in the church service of different church traditions. Toward that end, I've decided to visit several different churches over the next couple months: Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Anglican, Reformed Presbyterian, etc.

Several weeks ago, I trekked through the snow to the Holy Rosary and attended my very first Mass. I went by myself (though I saw quite a number of friends/classmates; some whom I had known to be Catholics, others I had not...), which might have been a bit of a mistake. I'm fairly sure I had the word 'Protestant' (if not 'Calvinist') emblazoned on my forehead. I failed to dip my hand in the water by the entrance, which resulted in my not getting a bulletin. I also failed to kneel as I entered the pew. Let's be honest; I failed at pretty much every Catholic tradition known to man. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the service.

It is not, perhaps, the substance of the service which I found attractive; but rather the aesthetic element or the order and liturgy. The preaching was sub par and the hymns not as theologically strong as I'd like. Still, the simplicity of the music, the way in which both Priest and congregation respond to one another and the Lord, and the reverential spirit fostered in such a setting appeal to me greatly. Now, I don't want to attempt an objective aesthetic judgment. I enjoy both classical music and electric guitars. And I can worship to both. Still, in my church culture, the latter can be found at every turn, where the former is a scarcity.

I fear that much of contemporary Evangelical Protestantism is a movement of recognition these days, and not a reactionary, much less reformatory movement. In this sense, we fall far short of the Biblical response. We have recognized the danger of worshipping the Lord with our lips, while our hearts remain far from Him. We have recognized that worship deals not with the ceremony or the tradition, but the sincerity and truthfulness of our confession and adoration. But how do we respond to this recognition? The typical 21st century Evangelical church (especially those with charismatic/Pentecostal tendencies) throws out all semblance of tradition. Extemporaneity is often equated with being led by the Spirit. Sometimes I get the feeling that an Evangelical church would never recite a creed on a weekly basis, simply because there would be little expectation of ‘the Spirit moving’ through a monotonous, recited, repeated text.

I also appreciate the sacramentology of the Catholic service. Communion seems underemphasized in most Protestant churches, perhaps as a reaction to the Catholic church. It is, after all, communion with Christ and not a compelling sermon which should draw us to our congregations. In attempts to make worship sincere and true, I feel as though Protestantism (as I’m saying this, I realize that this problem extends beyond Protestantism and simultaneously does not infect all of Protestantism) has stripped its church service, tradition and liturgy of all but the last remnants of physical substance. Most Protestant churches built in the last number of decades are whitewashed, plain and simple. We are fearful to decorate the church, for fear of iconoclasm (unless it involves horrendous banners or flags of countries we’ve never visited… who would ever make the mistake of worshipping those). We are fearful of incense, a pastor in robes, a liturgical calendar.

Everything has become a metaphor. But the Kingdom of God is no metaphor. Jesus Christ, the incarnated God, was no metaphor. God specified the construction and furnishing of His temple for a purpose. He specified the exact cutting and decoration of the priests’ robes for a reason. To be sure, a primary purpose was to illustrate the failure of “perfect” obedience devoid of any heartfelt conviction. But could it not also be that God is glorified by beauty of a physical kind, by an aesthetically provocative service?

As I visit churches of various traditions, I don’t intend to find the exceptional qualities of each and dream up some perfect super-church. To visit with that intention would be naïve, foolish, and no doubt self-centered and focused on my own, subjective inclinations. Still, I hope to expose myself to elements of Christianity which Protestantism has ignored, neglected, or forgotten; to her discredit. Next up, I think I’ll be visiting a Coptic Orthodox church…

Paul, St. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards... and Oswaldo

2005-01-14T06:21:00.000-05:00

I anticipate heaven first and foremost because it is only there that my relationship with God will exist, uninhibited by sin, time, space, etc. But I'll be honest. I'm also looking forward to meeting (in whatever context it is possible) a rather exhaustive list of saints. From Paul and St. Augustine to John Piper and J.I. Packer, from Luther and Calvin to Descartes and Kierkegaard, I anticipate conversations with the men who have enriched my life in so many different ways.

In Chinenandega, Nicaragua, our team spent most of its time under the care and oversight of Pastor Oswaldo. A native of Costa Rica, Oswaldo was imprisoned at a young age for terrorist activity. After enduring unspeakable torture, he recalled the few times his father had taken him to church. For three hours, lying bruised and bleeding on a bathroom floor, Oswaldo submitted to the Lordship of our Father and Savior. Bail for his release was the equivalent of $500,000. He expected to spend the rest of his life in the Costa Rican prison. Miraculously, however, the bail was lowered to a mere five hundred dollars, and his father was able to gain his release. After fleeing to Nicaragua, Oswaldo became a pastor. His life has been threatened numerous times; for years, he had to live in the mountains by himself. Several years ago, a man from his past life had Oswaldo on his knees with a gun to his head. God has miraculously intervened, time and time again. Now, Oswaldo oversees a number of churches spread throughout Nicaragua.

Two years ago, I attended a conference hosted by John Piper's Desiring God Ministries. The conference celebrated the 300th anniversary of Jonathan Edwards. Take a glance around my room and you'll see volumes upon volumes of books by Calvin, Luther, Warfield, Murray, etc. Hundreds of years from their deaths, their lives and work have been magnified by the scope of history. Not so, with Oswaldo. His life, I should imagine, will be "quickly forgotten, silently passing on, a mere shadow of a memory before time has even turned" (in the words of T. H. White). But the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The least of all the saints shall be greater than John. Perhaps in heaven we will be gathered at the feet of Pastor Oswaldo, not Jonathan Edwards, reveling in the glorious tales of God's mercy and grace in the lives of mortal man.

Jump on a bandwagon or get left in the dust...

2005-01-13T03:40:00.000-05:00

Several times a week, I'm generally asked this question: "Are you a religious sort of person?" I typically answer, "I'm a Christian." But I can't remember the last time the amount of specificity has ended there. Undoubtedly, one of two paths are immediately traversed. Sometimes, there is further inquiry: What kind of Christian? Does that mean you don't believe in evolution? Do you believe that people go to hell? Other times, I take the initiative myself. Regrettably, I often find myself answer the original question, "I'm a Christian... but..." It is not enough to simply be a Christian; I must emphasize that I am not a Christian who bombs abortion clinics or believes in abortion, for that matter. I am not a Christian who hates homosexuals; nor am I a Christian who embraces the practice of the homosexual lifestyle. I am not a Christian who believes every sentence in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, nor am I a Christian who believes the Bible a subjective, often non-applicable man-made document. The clarifications seem endless. To the question, "What KIND of Christian are you?" I am generally forced to respond, "Though this might sound arrogant, I would simply describe myself as a Biblical Christian." As the title of 'Christian' no longer seems to necessitate a Biblical basis for one's particapation or membership in Christianity, the label of 'Biblical' is sadly not a superfluous or repetitive one.

One could, perhaps, endeavor to simply label those non-Biblical attitudes or actions as heresy. I have taken this position on numerous occasions. To the typical, only mildly interested non-Christian, however, anyone with a cross around their neck or a WWJD bracelet on their wrist is a Christian; my narrow confines of Christianity must stem from an arrogant attitude towards other Christians.

This brings me to a more interesting situation. For nearly as often as I am asked by the non-Christian, "Are you a religious person?", I am asked by a fellow Christian, "What kind of Christian are you?" In this circumstance, I typically reply that I am of the Reformed tradition. Sometimes this leads to further discussion, sometimes it gets me a pat on the back, sometimes it gets me the cold shoulder. It seems as though nearly every Christian these days can categorize themselves. Even if you are not under the auspice of a theological tradition, you can be a 'Rick Warren' or a 'Prayer of Jabez' or a 'Left Behind' kind of Christian. My question is this. At what point do we commit the sin of the Corinthian church and claim, "I follow Paul" or "I follow Apollos". When I scoff at the Arminian and claim Luther, Calvin, Hodge, Warfield, and the Puritans in my own tradition, have I sinned?

The 21st century Christian, surrounded by a number of denominations and sects probably outnumbering the early church, seems compelled to jump on a bandwagon. In a post-modern context, there are many, of course, who try to present themselves as bridging the gaps between all traditions. I find this a bit contrived and silly. An individual can firmly embrace ecumenicism without attempting to claim a liturgical and theological amalgamation of the plethora of Christian traditions. Still, as we claim our tradition, as we jump on the bandwagon, let us show caution. We are defined by the road we travel. We are defined by our destination. We are not defined, fundamentally, by the wagon we happen to be riding in. So while I claim the Reformed tradition my own, let me first and foremost claim Christ Jesus as my own.

A Question of Identity

2005-01-12T15:59:00.000-05:00

Every time I interact with Christians from another culture, and especially when it happens to be a culture in a third world country, a seemingly obvious yet experientially odd truth impresses itself upon me. The most basic and fundamental characteristic of a human being is his being created in the image of God. The most fundamental distinctive of one man from the next, however, and the most basic division of mankind deals with our identity in Christ. Either we are found in Him, chosen by Him, and purchased by His blood or we are not found in Him, rejected by Him, outside of His covenant of grace.

Between the language barrier, difference of culture, education, experience, etc., any relationship I could hold with a Nicaraguan was somewhat stunted, to say the least. Yet my tie to the Nicaraguan Christian remains stronger than any tie I could have to a non-Christian, no matter how similar we might appear. I thought much about my non-Christian roommate. Put us in a room with two Nicaraguans, and there's no doubt how the world would lump us together. Kyle and I are both intelligent individuals, we've grown up in Western culture, we're American through and through. But this is not our fundamental identity. When we look past skin color, culture, education, and class, we discover the sheep and the goats.

How should this truth affect my worldview? I see a number of applications; I'll name a few, in no deliberate order of importance. This truth should renew my passion for personal evangelism. Too often, I see my non-Christian friends as they relate to me. Instead, I should always conceive others first in terms of their relationship with God. For while I hold many settled friendships with non-Christians of various backgrounds, none of these men and women can claim a settled relationship with God. Far too easily, I forget that so many of my friends are at this moment destined for hell; our visible similarities overcome the stunning reality of the situation, and I feel myself far from compelled to continually pray for them, expose them to the Gospel, etc. Though we are a culture in love with the discovery of similarities and shared experience and disposition, I must clearly see at all times the fundamental difference between myself and my non-Christian friend.

Additionally, the truth of identity should continually reform my attitude towards the body of Christ. Despite glaring differences, I am bound by the Holy Spirit, a brother-in-Christ to Christians of all cultures, traditions, etc. Too often, I fear, we cross the line and define ourselves primarily by our tradition, not our mutual Savior. Though I might enjoy the company of those in the Reformed tradition (unless I'm looking for a good debate, of course) more than another tradition, and though those in the Reformed tradition might, in fact, be the most effective means of my continued sanctification, I cannot restrict myself to their company. Much is learned, I believe, from rubbing shoulders with Christians of all sizes and shapes.

Finally, this truth tells us something about God. We are reminded in Corinthians that God did not choose the powerful, the wise, the noble of birth. We are reminded in Romans that there is no longer a distinction between Greek or Jew, slave or free. In the 21st century, I am thankful for reminders (such as my trip to Nicaragua) pointing out that God had not chosen Western, American, university-educated men and women as the foundation of His church. He has chosen His Son, the cornerstone, the rock of our salvation.

A not-so-new Daniel.

2005-01-11T19:55:00.000-05:00

I was in Diriamba, Nicaragua during the approach of the New Year, staying on a Youth With a Mission (YWAM) base. As midnight approached, I separated myself from the group of college students and found a secluded corner on the grounds of the base. In my hands, I held my pen and journal; perhaps my two closest companions. Latino dance music dully pounded through the night air, which hung heavy with humidity. The clouds raced one another a mere few hundred yards above my head, across a sky lit with the flame of thousands upon thousands of galaxies yearning to be explored. So much wonder, so much majesty unveiled above me; yet all of it merely the fingerprint of the unseen Lord of all. In that moment, I felt like Abraham, staring at the cacophony of stars slowly straggling across the sky as he wandered towards the promised land. I felt like the wise men from the East, fixated on that single, guiding light in the sky. I felt like Paul the night after the scales fell from his eyes, gazing at the heavens, a new man with a new Lord to serve.
It was the same feeling that tore at my soul with astonishing deliberation throughout the totality of my road trip. It was the same feeling I posted about on Dec. 14th. But with that feeling, God also brought a keen reminder. There is much this young man has yet to learn, quite possibly more I have to unlearn, and most certainly the greatest volume of lessons and mysteries in my life cannot be penetrated by my heart or mind. Rich Mullins undoubtedly puts it into words better than I.

Another hour deeper in the night
Another mile farther down the road
A man can drive as hard as he can drive
And never get as far as his heart was meant to go

From the slow dance of the swaying palm trees to the prying floodwater coursing their way through the mountains to the brilliant, elusive bursts of flame that sear through the sky, my time in Nicaragua served as a dramatic provokement of my heart and mind. The seemingly mundane, commonplace wonders which man will never fathom are but mere shadows of the mysteries behind the Incarnation, the forgiveness of our sins, the work of Christ on the cross. What audacity, what banality, what bastard-like behavior I embrace upon living (or believing) as though my knowledge of the Gospel is complete, my understanding of our purchase brought to full fruition. Like a child devoid of patience, I long to read a book before I can repeat the alphabet, ride a bicycle before I can hold my balance, play a beatiful melody before I know a simple scale. I would rather learn in the school of this world than the school of Christ. Perhaps that is why I long so desperately for those moments alone, in the vast grandeur of the Lord's creation. For it is in those moments that I recognize most clearly my need for Him and my unceasing need to know Him. So when I long in those deep and dark nights, may I long for You. And if I weep, let me weep as a man who is longing for his Home.

A new year, a new semester, a new website.

2005-01-11T19:20:00.000-05:00

Typically, I am prone to scoff at the idea of making New Year's resolutions for myself. Whether this is promulgated from my view of every day as a determining set of resolutions, the fact that I find most resolutions made on New Year's laughable, or my have a negative association with those who make New Year's resolutions (hint: a combination of the aforementioned), my attitude will most likely remain the same for the next few decades. Nonetheless, this New Year happened to be an incredibly reflective time for me, with the result of at least one practical resolution. The resolution is to write more privately (I know, you might find that humorous) but more importantly, to actively set aside time to post publicly at least 2 or 3 times a week. Toward that end, I have left the world of Xanga and joined my father and Derek on blogspot. Anyone can post comments on blogspot, unlike Xanga, where you must be a member. Also, it seems as though I will be able to connect my blog to more like-minded folks than I could on xanga. I will begin to archive my relevant Xanga posts on this blog. The scope of my blog will probably expand as I post more often; I'm hoping to include more posts on my studies at school, Scripture passages or other books I'm reading, etc. So expect to read more from Daniel Kearns in the year 2005.

Evangelism and Post-Modernism

2004-12-18T02:37:00.000-05:00

Before I post on ecumenism (and seriously, I will), I want to start provoking your thoughts at a more fundamental level. The church is entering a critical period of time; our generation (for better or for worse... often, I think worse) is going to be caught in the middle of it. Now, I know that nearly every generation probably begins a message in a similar way to this post, but let's take an honest look at the trend of society: For more than half a millenia, the Church has been more or less entrenched in Modernism. The last few decades, however, have marked a new debate among Christian philosophers, theologians and intellectuals concerning Post-Modernism. It's now fairly safe to say that the Church has entered a Post-Modern age; the more pertinent question is whether the Church itself is going to be 'Post-Modern' or how it will adapt to a Post-Modern context.
This issue of Post-Modernism has affected all aspects of the 'academic' aspects of Christianity already: Biblical interpretation (hermeneutics), ecumenism, ecclesiology, sacramentology, etc. As well, the 'practical' sides of these aspects have likewise been affected. In this talk I gave a couple months ago, my focus was primarily on evangelism and Post-Modernism. To be honest, upon further reading, I'm not even sure if I wholly agree with the position I took (largely based on the work of James Smith and Robert Jenson at the Center for Theological Inquiry). At any rate, I believe a clear recognition of the implications, ramifications and infiltrations of both Modernism and Post-Modernism (and less importantly, the Eastern religions, Marxism, nihilism, etc.) will save our church from losing itself in further confusion. I could go off for pages; but I think I'll restrain myself for now. At any rate, the flavor of my Xanga is probably going in a new direction (Derek, you better start reading)... and that would be striving for a clear understanding of the Church's function and role, as well as the most effective means of attaining those ends, in a Post-Modern society. With that said, I'm pasting the notes from my talk (unedited since I delivered it, even though I've changed my mind on a few areas) and hoping some discussion ensues... enjoy.

Evangelism in a Post-modern Society

1 Cor. 9:19-23

“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”

Tonight, my ‘talk’ is split up into two fairly distinct sections. The first will be more sermon-esque, as I attempt to answer the question, “What does it mean to become all things to all people?” The second will be more like a lecture, as I expound upon what I believe we must ‘become’ to bring the message of salvation to our generation.

The passage I just read has been a long-standing banner held aloft by evangelistic groups across the entire board of orthodoxy (and even hetero-orthodoxy). Thus, I found myself a bit reticent to use it as my starting point. But as is often the case with the ‘popular’ passages of the Bible, we cannot let misconstruing interpretations deter us from seeking the Biblical interpretation of the passage.

I believe the key to understanding this passage is extricating the medium from the design or message, and then further dividing between things indifferent and things unlawful.

Paul is quite clear on the message, proclaiming, “I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” The medium, however, varied greatly depending on which group he was ministering to. With the Jews, he observed the ceremonies of the law, so as to avoid giving offence, and with the Gentiles he was no less careful. Paul emphasizes parenthetically the critical importance of his subjection to Christ – “not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ.” His ability to vary his medium is quite clearly constrained by his subjection to Christ. Also, observe that he accommodates himself to the weak, not to the obstinate.

Secondly, we must make the distinction between things indifferent and things unlawful. In the realm of things indifferent, we must lay down our own preferences or biases. We must not flaunt our freedom in Christ in such a way to turn away non-believers.

“He would transgress no laws of Christ to please or humor any man; but he would accommodate himself to all men, where he might do it lawfully, to gain some. He denied himself for their sakes, that he might insinuate into their affections, and gain their souls. The rights of God he could not give up, but he might resign his own, and he very often did so for the good of others.”

“Flavors” of Evangelism

A cursory reading of Acts reveals a multiplicity of what we might call “flavors” of evangelism. At the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, Peter speaks to a large mass of individuals and more than 3,000 are saved. In Acts 3, Peter and John heal a lame beggar, through which Peter is given opportunity to share the Gospel with many.

Paul does everything. He preaches in the Jewish synagogues. He debates in the Greek agora. He philosophizes at the Areopagus. Rarely, however, do we see him arguing (unless he’s speaking to Christians). Though he presents his case in many different ways, he typically does just that: Present his case. At Mars Hill, he presents his case from creation to redemption. Before Festus, he simply asks a question.. “Do you believe in the prophets? I know you do.” I don’t think any of us have ever tried to save someone with that question. Paul’s blatant presentation of the Gospel, though the ‘flavor’ may have varied, emphasizes my last point.

Importance of the Spirit

Christians on both ends of the spectrum have knowingly or unknowingly quenched the importance of the Holy Spirit in regards to evangelism. There are some, like me, who could present dozens of arguments… historical, theological, scientific, philosophical, yadda yadda yadda and at the end of the day, ask yourself… How can someone NOT believe in Christianity? We place the burden of believing on a clear understanding of the Gospel and Christianity as a whole… and once we reach that point with a person, we’re left scratching our heads, wondering why they don’t “get it.”

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who do nothing besides ‘being a good friend.’ In this case, the Holy Spirit is expected to miraculously change the unbeliever, without the Christian ever presenting the Gospel, bringing up those “tough” conversations, or initiating.

Both have lost a sense of the importance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s power works in two ways: He opens the heart of the unbeliever, and He speaks through the words and actions of the believer. The first is of greater importance, but neither can be forgotten or disregarded. In some sense, the evangelism of the disciples can seem a bit heartless. Christ told them to shake off their sandals and move on if a town did not accept the message. But they knew it was the Holy Spirit, and not them, who moved hearts. All the same, the early church leaders presented the Gospel in every situation possible… to their peers, to religious leaders, to the poor, the lame, their captors, judges, and fellow prisoners.

In our attempt to “become all things to all people”, let us mimic Paul and the early church. When it is lawful and beneficial, we must lay down our own preferences and accommodate the culture and traditions around us. We must shape our evangelism to those whom we are evangelizing to, but without ever forgetting that we submit to Christ’s law. And we must not forget the importance of the Holy Spirit, the only agent through whom evangelism is possible.

Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “What eventually shows up in culture has trickled down from philosophy. We can only engage cultural phenomena if we engage philosophical ideas.” I want to spend the rest of the evening discussing how we engage our peers and their philosophy.

Before I begin my lecture, I’d like to hear what you guys think of when you hear the words ‘modernism and post-modernism’. A Christian theologian/philosopher at Calvin College said something that shook my world a few weeks ago… “Maybe Christians got into bed with modernity a little too soon, premaritally, as it were… true love waits for post-modernity.”

Modernism began around the 16th century with the Enlightenment. Undoubtedly, with nearly five hundred years at the forefront of philosophical thought, it evolved dramatically. Many of the early modern thinkers were Christians: Descartes, Bacon, Pascal… but equal numbers of non-Christian thinkers marched under the same flag of modernity… from John Locke to Nietzsche.

Modernism vs. Post-Modernism

Stark Individualism Community
Reason Interpretation
Everything is science
Autonomy

The first instance of modernism is captured by Descartes’ statement, “I think, therefore I am.” Ironically, though Descartes’ statement was an attempt to solidify a rational belief in God and religion, several hundred years later, his thought process was the harbinger of one of the final stirring statements of modernism: God is dead. With nearly unwavering confidence, Protestants aligned themselves with modernity… so quickly that they failed to ask many fundamental questions which can be asked within post-modernity.

I see the damaging effect of modernity in three distinct instances or areas of post-Reformation Christianity: Systematic theology, missions/theocracy and classical apologetics.

Systematic Theology:

A cursory reading of Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield and many other systematic theologians reveals a stunning connection between science and theology. Now, let me be clear, science and faith do not stand opposed… in fact, this is a topic I could devote another few hours to… but science and faith are intrinsically different in terms of epistemology, method, knowability, etc. Unfortunately, Christianity within modernism strove to interpret faith and theology as science. Like science, we attempt to promote a theory within which Biblical texts most closely fit… from the theology of the last days to the future of Israel as a nation to predestination, free will and even our own salvation.

The emphasis within our theology often rests on the completeness of the system, the momentous weight of its arguments, and the logic, reason, and rationality that permeates it through and through. Is this Biblical? I am not saying that our faith should be an unreasonable faith; but as St. Augustine once said, “I believe in order that I might understand.” Modernism proclaims that understanding must precede belief; much of the theology of the past few centuries echoes this claim.

Missions and Theocracy:

If we looked at the majority of missionary work in the modern era, we would see a distinct pattern. Missionaries often traveled to an illiterate or solely native-speaking group of people. The first steps were to ‘civilize’ these people, bringing the English (or other European) language to them. Secondly, the Bible was either translated into their native tongue, or the people were educated to the point of understanding an English Bible. At that point, the entire people group was expected to come to salvation; after all, who would deny that Christianity had not brought order and prosperity to a once lost people? The modern notion of cultural, civil, economic and governmental improvement quickly become the basis for believing in the power of the Gospel.

This same modern notion has plagued America, from the first Puritan settlers to 9/11. The original Puritan colonies were established to be a ‘city on a hill’, a heaven on earth, a light or beacon to guide the rest of Europe, where church and state had separated and often opposed one another for many years. The belief, rooted in modernism, was that such a society could exist because science and the supreme faculty of Reason brought with them the power to overturn the irrational behavior of sinning. Theocracy could exist once again, and God would choose these people, the Americans, as His own. Even in 21st century America, after church and state have decisively split, we retain these notions of being a theocratic, God-chosen nation.

Classical Apologetics:

For centuries, much of the ‘higher level’ evangelism has been conducted using classical apologetics. I could explicate on more than a dozen arguments for God’s existence: change, efficient causality, time and contingency, degrees of perfection, design, miracles, consciousness, truth, ontology, morality, desire, aesthetic experience, common consent… but these arguments fall dreadfully short… especially in a post-modern society. Even within modernity, classical apologetics has had limited success. Perhaps we have proven that Christianity is a reasonable religion; but this does little to convince others that it is the only true faith.

I thoroughly believe that the ridiculous battle between science and faith was created by we, the Christians… not the world. In our attempts to make apologetics mimic scientific theory, we destroyed the proper intent and utility of both. In my mind, classical apologetics is now a tool of reassurance for the believer, but rarely more than a mere stepping stone (and not even a necessary one, at that) for reaching out to the unbeliever. I have had numerous arguments with atheists, and even convinced many that they must be open deists… but this has brought none of them to a desire to hear the Gospel.

I say all of this with a bit of hesitancy. While Christianity has been robbed of some of its efficaciousness under the banner of modernity, it has also progressed. It is a good thing that the Reformation has brought about a clearer understanding of what we believe. It is a good thing that Christian philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga are respected by theist and atheist philosophers alike. But we must quickly admit the limits and constraints of Christianity within modernity. Reformed theology, taken to its limits, caves back in upon itself, becoming tautological and circular. Theology and faith cannot be equated to science.

We must liberate our task of evangelism from the constraints of our culture, yet simultaneously present our message in the light of our culture… by no means an easy task. This brings us, of course, to the topic that has been ignored or feared by the majority of Protestant Christians: Post-modernism.

Christians typically give two responses to post-modernism. The first would be the highly uneducated response: “Everything is relative!? That’s retarded.” The second is a bit more educated (in a broad sense), but still ignorant of post-modernism itself: “Doesn’t asserting that everything is relative presuppose that the original assertion is not relative? Isn’t this a self-defeating statement?”

Neither answer gives post-modernism the credit it should receive. And surprisingly enough (I say this quite sarcastically), Christianity is pretty much the last in line to pick up the fact that modernity has failed its purposes for both the Christian and secular world. Before I explain a bit about post-modernism, I’m going to trace the fall of modernity in the 20th century.

Historical forces – World War I and II, Vietnam, Korea… all of these pointed away from the ‘modern’ notion of improvement, especially since the “bad guys” were clinging to modern philosophy much more tightly than the “good guys.” Stalin and Hitler were essentially Nietschze’s first two “super men”, while fascism and communism took autonomy, stark individualism, religious negligence, and the power of Reason to its logical end. Philosophically, within the scope of modernity, these men could not be challenged. Scientifically, the advent of Einstein’s quantum mechanics obliterated the universal cause-and-effect principle… and on the most discrete level, determinism could not exist. Thus, historically, philosophically and scientifically, modernity died.

Post-Modernism

There are three key themes in post-modernism.

The first, embodied in the work of Lyotard, is a rejection of objectivity or neutrality, and hence a rejection of the very notion of the secular. What counts as truth is governed by and ruled by the religious commitments we hold, not a capital R Reason.

The second, embodied in the work of Foucault, is the most difficult of the three to paraphrase… as he happens to be one of the most obscure and difficult philosophers to ever walk this earth… but let me over-simplify it by saying this: modernism focused on the individual, post-modernism focuses on the community or body.

The third, embodied in the work of Darada, is simply this: Everything is interpretation. Note that this has a far different implication than “everything is relative.”

At this point, we must ask ourselves a critical question. Is post-modernism inherently opposed to Christianity, as modernism was? And here, I answer with an emphatic “no”. Thus, I actually believe that evangelism will be made more effective within a post-modern society, if we are willing to accommodate ourselves to post-modernity.

First of all, we’ve thrown out the notion of the secular or neutrality. This is a good thing. No believer and unbeliever can converse while clinging to the idea of being completely objective or unbiased. Atheism has often been equated with objectivity, where religion has been equated with subjectivity. With the advent of post-modernism, both are labeled as biased, governed and ruled by religious commitments. Thus, the playing field has been leveled for Christian and non-Christian alike. Furthermore, it no longer comes down to who has the more compelling argument. While the evolution of Christian apologetics might cry out against that statement, I believe that this, too, is beneficial to us.

Secondly, there is a desire to return to community. The notion of acceptance and finding one’s niche has trumped the notion of individualism. Within this context, we as Christians have a renewed opportunity to present ourselves as a community of believers. Indeed, post-modernism places a pleasantly timed burden on the universal church, as it must strive towards Unity if it is to appeal to the unbelieving masses. I’ll talk more on the church and our role in a moment.

Thirdly, we’re left to grapple with the statement, “Everything is interpretation.” This is a statement I wrestled with for many, many sleepless nights. Can we dare to call the Gospel an interpretation? Can we dare to taint the notion of absolute truth with the impingent term, interpretation? Can we dare to call the account of a sovereign and omniscient God, our story, His story, an interpretation? And I’m left with the answer I didn’t want to come to. Yes. “Everything is interpretation” does not mean “everything is relative.” We do not jettison the truth of this book by confessing it to be interpretation. Look at the death of Christ. A roman soldier confesses, “Surely, this was the Son of God.” But dozens, perhaps hundreds of others who witnessed the same event came away with a different interpretation. Or think of the many who will argue with you, “My Bible says…” Every one of us brings to the Bible our own set of presupposition that constitutes its message in a certain way. Everything is interpretation. What does this mean? Two things.

We are dependent on revelation to give us the horizon and the Holy Spirit to allow us to interpret. Unlike modernity, where we relied upon our own reason and rationality, we must return to the importance of the Holy Spirit; especially in the area of evangelism.

Secondly, the utility of an interpretation is not lost by stating that everything is interpretation. There are still good and bad interpretations, there are still right and wrong interpretations. The Little Mermaid.

Does Christianity lose its distinctiveness in a post-modern setting?

As I began to accept the impotence of classical Christian apologetics and the scope of Christianity within modernity, a number of questions began to haunt me… but one stood above all the others. Does Christianity lose its distinctiveness in a post-modern setting?

Again, many sleepless nights. After all, hasn’t Christianity succeeded in part because we can debunk other religions? Hasn’t it succeeded because it’s been so well defended? Hasn’t it succeeded because of its logical sensibility?

The answer is no. It’s succeeded because of the power of the Holy Spirit. We must reject the conception of Christianity as a body of ideas! Christianity is a narrative, a story, the truthful interpretation of the myths that surround us, and the only real one. Post-modernism goes two ways. If you’ve jettisoned modern notions or Rationality, etc., you can end in utter cynicism or revalue confession and confessional ways of being in the world. We are called to do the latter. We no longer lay claim to truth, we confess truth, knowing that one day, all will confess that Jesus is Lord and God is who He has claimed to be. Legitimation is not found in the strength of our arguments, but in the work of the Holy Spirit and in the most visible sense, only upon the return of Christ. I believe a “post-modern” Christianity will also return to many other lost tenants of the Christian faith; to the ancient Christian disciplines, to aesthetics, art, person and role… but I have not the time to explore these implications.

There is a final relationship between modernity and post-modernity that I have only hinted at. This is, perhaps, the most important relationship, especially as we look towards evangelism. The topic at hand is narrative and the narratable world. Modern narrative had two distinctives: A series of sequential events made joint sense, and these events could happen in a “real” world. Post-modernism, as we see in works such by James Joyce or William Faulkner, completely rejects these distinctives.

Modernity was defined by the attempt to live in a universal story without a universal storyteller. The experiment has failed. If there is no universal storyteller, if God does not invent the world’s story, than neither you nor I nor all of us together can so shape the world that it can make narrative sense. If God is dead, there can be no narratable world. More disturbingly, if there is not a Biblical God, then realistic narrative is no longer a plausible means for our human self-understanding. Where did we come from, where are we going? These questions are no longer relevant. Human consciousness is too obscure a mystery to itself for us to script our own lives.

A burden has been placed on the church. We must become the narratable world. Protestantism has been modernity’s specific form of Christianity. Protestantism presupposed that addressees of the Gospel already inhabited the narratable world in which stories like the Gospel could be believed, and that we therefore could dismantle the gospel’s own liturgical world, which earlier times of the church had created. Protestantism has from the beginning supposed that the real action is in the world, and that what happens “in church” can only be preparation to get back into reality. This was always a wrong judgment – remarkably naïve but understandable within a modern context. In a post-modern world, however, those days are gone forever.

In a world that knows no narrative, a world that knows no storyteller, a world that entertains no promises, how can the Church evangelize with any shred of plausibility? There is one, and only one line here that must be followed: the church must herself be a communal, narrative world in which promises are made and kept. Hope has been lost outside of the church. It has been argued, quite persuasively, that nihilism is the only logical option for the godless. The assembly of believers must therefore itself be the event in which we may behold what is to come. And this necessity is not new… I am beginning to believe that this necessity is the purpose of John recording his visions in Revelation.

If, in the post-modern world, a congregation or group of Christian wants to be “relevant” in its evangelism, it must preach unabashedly the entirety of our narration, from creation to fall to redemption. Unbelievers must see that humans are image-bearers of God, with an amount of worth which knows no measure, because God has breathed His spirit into us. Unbelievers must see that we are sinners beholding what is to come. “Going to church” must be a journey to the place where we will behold our destiny, where we will see what is to come of us.

In our evangelistic endeavors, we need to embody and confess truth, not argue for it. We need to “become all things to all people.” As Karl Barth once said, we should approach unbelievers with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Christianity is not a body of ideas, it is a narrative in which we play a role.

nasate

2004-12-14T02:42:00.000-05:00

I’m back home in Hershey for 2-3 weeks, then heading to Nicaragua! Though I promised to post on ecumenism, as usual, my xanga promises are falling short. I will post on ecumenism before I leave for Nicaragua, but tonight’s post will not deal with it. Actually, I just wanted to ramble a bit on a theme already quite familiar in my life. Lately (as in the past several years of my life), I’ve been thinking/journaling about nostalgia. Up until recently, though I’ve seen a relation between nostalgia and my fall famous wanderlust, I’ve processed them distinctly. I’ve always seen my nostalgia as longing for the past, while my wanderlust indicates a type of dissatisfaction (or limited fulfillment) with the present, and an anticipation of the future. And so, for eight weeks, I wandered the wilderness out west and pondered the relationship between my nostalgia and wanderlust. The conclusion? Perhaps there is an amalgamation of nostalgia and wanderlust, a superlative form (as Truth relates to truth) that can be experienced solely by the Christian sojourner.

Nostalgia comes from the Greek ‘nostos’, which is actually a verb implying a return to one’s home. Interestingly enough, the original Sanskrit word, ‘nasate’, means ‘he approaches’. It is a wistful longing to return to some unrecoverable condition. Yet for the Christian, perhaps this condition is not unrecoverable, and perhaps this condition is not bounded by our perception of time. Balance that with wanderlust; that insatiable desire to roam and impulsive passion to wander. Yet for the Christian, perhaps this condition is not insatiable and perhaps the wandering is not without direction.

For quite some time, I wondered if nostalgia or wanderlust could be categorically confined as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. If that is not the case, do we look to the object? Nostalgia directed towards A is right, nostalgia directed towards B is wrong? Or perhaps the morality lies in the process or context. If I experience wanderlust with mindset A, it is right; if I experience it with mindset B, it is wrong. In the end, I think my scope was a bit narrow. God intends for every aspect of my nostalgia and wanderlust to be redeemed. And so I am left attempting to redeem these two constant themes in my life. In that act of redemption, I have found that solely Christian experience and vision, a timeless reinterpretation and reconstruction of my nostalgia and wanderlust.

The redeemed nostalgia looks backwards and forwards simultaneously. Yet it looks much further than the short-sighted, human nostalgia. It looks past my own personal experience to the universal experience of mankind. It looks wistfully at the fall of mankind; both at my own failures each and every day, and at the original failure of Adam. But it looks even further, to the original state of mankind, to the perfection once enjoyed in Eden. Yet as it reaches this point, the redeemed nostalgia instantly leaps forward in vision. The irrecoverable is now recoverable. Because of Christ’s work on the cross, all things are being redeemed for His glory. Thus, the redeemed nostalgia eagerly anticipates the future; it does not cease at a wistful glance at the past. For I am confident that the covenants of God will come to pass, and the perfect relationship between God and His chosen will be restored.

Similarly, the redeemed wanderlust remains, in some sense, insatiable. For me, this has been a constant paradox, best viewed in the book of Ecclesiastes. Substance and fulfillment are intrinsically linked to hope; yet our hope is not of nor directed towards this world. Thus the antinomy of attempting to find substance and fulfillment in a medium unable to actualize the essence of the very substance and fulfillment we seek. And so very often, this leaves me wandering, for, though I have set my hope in God, as U2 would put it, ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’, and in some sense, will never find it this side of complete redemption. Thus the redeemed wanderlust is not an aimless one. It realizes the paradox of the already and the not yet in a fallen world that has seen its Savior, yet not been fully redeemed.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a cyclic action going on here. As I struggle to redeem these themes of nostalgia and wanderlust in my life, they return once again to this theme of redemption. This is not, I believe, a facet applicable only to nostalgia or wanderlust. Rather, as we endeavor to redeem all that surrounds and inhabits us: emotions, the church, art, politics, sex, nature, etc., a mark of the efficacy of this redemptive action will be a return to the universal, comprehensive act of redemption. As truth points to the greater Truth, so our small acts of redemption point to the great Redemption.

Nostalgia and wanderlust continue to be the dominant emotional themes in my life; perhaps two of the very few emotions I’ve ever fully felt and embraced. And with great encouragement, I embrace them, for I see in them the redemptive work of God, even in these once human emotions. I continue on this sojourn, a wandering and wistful mendicant filled with the hope of a Redeemer. Perhaps the Sanskrit 'nasate' pierces closest to the redeemed meditations of my heart: He approaches.

Adoption, Part 1

2004-11-21T02:44:00.000-05:00

Today's post is going to be an interesting venture from the norm. As many of you probably know, I've been taking two classes on adoption this semester. It's opened up more cans of worms than I ever thought possible. But in the end, it's been a catalyst; and a much needed one. During my road trip last summer, my adoption was on my mind constantly. I'm not even sure where to begin. But in some sense, I guess I don't have to. Basically, I've begun to organize all my thoughts, ponderings, emotions, memories, etc. pertaining to my adoption in my journal.

Mark Miller, a pastor at NewSong, is actually talking to me about trying to collect these thoughts in some sort of publishable form; this might be the beginnings of such an endeavor. I'm not sure how understandable it will be, and I struggle a lot with how important my adoption should be; how much I should think and pray about my birthmother, etc. But... I'm getting ahead of myself, all of these issues will probably be tackled in the 'content' of these posts, not the preface. So bear with a bit of vagueness and just read away; at some point in the future, it might all make sense. And it exposes a bit more of the emotional Dan, perhaps a bit less of the theological/philosophical Dan.

Chapter 1: The Dream

The dream was always the same. And yet, while a painting or a piece of music remains intrinsically the same, we do not. As Heraclitus would say, “Man cannot step in the same river twice.” Thus, the dream was always the same, but I could not experience the same dream twice. It began naturally enough. A familiar creek behind my church. The air, clinging gently to my clothes with the faint odor of burning oak. The trees, arrayed in pungent reds, oranges, and yellows. The creek and wind in a playful duet: the creek a deep cello, waxing and waning with constancy as the bow turns back and forth, the wind an airy flute, the hushed breath of a lover. And then I see her. How can such an aimless traipse through the long grass be so purposeful? Her eyes are dark like my own; her skin a gentle tan. Her long hair weaves its way in and out of the grass, her small hands touch the stems absent-mindedly. Her dress, only a few shades lighter than the sky, makes me believe she belongs among the clouds. She is beautiful, in a reverential and childish way, and perhaps a year or two younger than myself.

She is humming to herself a wondrous and forgotten melody. Finally, an eternity later, she lifts her eyes and they meet my own. There is age in her eyes, a timelessness. She has the eyes of a new mother, she has the eyes of an unspoiled virgin, she has the eyes of someone who has lost a loved one in a great and meaningless war. I do not understand the depth of her gaze, I can not grasp the knowledge and experience behind her eyes, but I must return her stare, for I am haunted by this one thing: she and I have the same eyes. There is a slight motion in her body, beckoning me to move. I am unable to react, pouring my every last effort into knowing this girl from nothing but her eyes, those majestic tellers of stories full of more joy and sorrow than her small body could seem to contain. With a twinge of sadness, but a strong sense of understanding and urgency, she turns. Reticently, I watch one foot slowly tread in front of the other; that same aimless but purposeful stride. Soon enough, she is lost in the grass, and whether it is growing or she is shrinking, I am never quite sure. But little difference does such a thing make, for the result is the same. I am left alone, and as the stinging tears begin to drift down my cheeks, I am left with a puzzling realization. She is my sister.

But the most unnerving part about my dream was this: though I awoke every morning, knowing the girl in my dream was my lost sister, and though I drifted into sleep every night, knowing I would dream about her, in my dream itself I did not know her until I once again locked gazes. And the realization always came too late. I would go to sleep, reminding myself over and over, “You must speak to her, chase her, find out who she is.” But my words were spoken in vain; every night, I stood frozen, unable to move or speak. As suddenly as the dreams began, they stopped.

Why do I begin my story, an exploration of the way in which my adoption has profoundly impacted me, with this dream? Perhaps because it represents to me so well the numerous, variegated intricacies of my experience as an adoptee. There is the unexpected nature of feelings and emotions that rise and fall without notice. There is the vague, dream-like quality in which you create and fantasize experiences and a life that may not be your own. There is the constant frustration, the constant questioning. For at some point, every adoptee must feel a bit like Cassandra; aware of some truth, cognizant of some reality, yet utterly incapable of acting upon those realizations. And always, there is the ignorance. The inability to grasp one’s experiences, thoughts and emotions holistically, the inability to comprehend, the inability to know the past, present or future.

Perhaps I also begin with this dream because it is a story I have never told (in detail) to another soul; a story which I was unwilling to tell even myself until very recently. In this way, it represents the majority of my inner turmoil; an untold and (until recent years) unexplored story, the secret I would not even admit to myself. For though I could tell my parents, post-adolescence, that I loved them, and though I knew they were my ‘real’ parents (a horribly deceptive term to use with a child), I could not speak of the pain and anguish for my birthmother. In my efforts to be strong, I hid the experiences, repressed the emotions, and forgot the dreams. Thus, I begin my story with a dream, because my experience as an adoptee has often seemed a dream. Sometimes a nightmare, other times a phantasm that rings loudly, “too good to be true”, and always, always on the dangerous verge of being forgotten, if I remain unwilling to confront it.

Idolatry: Drawing the Line

2004-09-30T02:45:00.000-04:00

I read J. I. Packer’s “Knowing God” for the first time in ninth grade. I believe this book receives the dubious distinction as the one that started it all. My reading list began to shift from Asimov, Michener, Steinbeck, Cooper, etc. (though I still enjoy all of those) to theology of both a practical and philosophical nature. I read “Knowing God” twice more in high school, and I’m currently co-leading a guys’ Bible study on the book within Chi Alpha. Every single time I read the book, I’m most blown away by Ch. 4. I can still remember my first reading of this chapter; the utter shock which passed through my mind.

If you haven’t read the book yet, you ought to. I have quite a few copies, so feel free to ask for one. It is one of the very few Christian books to top a ‘best-selling’ list without also tipping the ‘sell-out’ scale. Anyways, Ch. 4 is entitled ‘The Only True God.’ The chapter centers about the second commandment:

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord Your God am a jealous God.”(Ex. 20:4-5)

Typically, we view this commandment as an extension of the first; ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ Packer points to another principle. To quote Charles Hodge, “idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images.” Because images both dishonor God and mislead men, Packer calls for the removal of images in our churches and households. Should we hang crosses in our sanctuaries? Should pictures of Jesus adorn our Sunday School rooms? I can still remember being in ninth grade, and recalling a work-sheet from sixth grade. We were discussing the book of Revelation; specifically how it describes Christ’s second coming. Rev. 1:15-16 speaks of Him in this way: “His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full strength.” Words cannot adequately describe the representation of ‘Jesus’ in our work-sheet. I do remember thinking to myself, ‘If this is what Packer wants to remove… good riddance!”

Eventually, however, I realized that the question of physical representations and images mark only the beginning of a deep, deep rabbit hole. Moses lived in a day and age much simpler than our own; a day and age in which molten images were among the sole sources of a misconception of the Lord. Now, we have far more than children’s illustrated Bibles, crucifixes, and paintings of Jesus to potentially deceive us. Extend, rather, this commandment to the realm of literature, music and the arts.

How many times have you read a book which portrays God in a slightly non-Biblical fashion, causing you to nonetheless conform, in your mind, the immutable God to this subjective portrayal? How many songs project a fallacious god, but one which we feel as though we can relate to more strongly than the God of the Bible?

Let’s make it a bit more difficult. How many times have you read a book in which God is not portrayed non-Biblically; but rather, non-holistically? Perhaps He is all there, but accented in certain ways. Songs and art can certainly accomplish the same. From ‘The Passion’ to the Chronicles of Narnia, we are daily tempted to conceive of “our” God, rather than the Bible’s God.

My denomination focuses much on the cross. C.J. Mahaney’s book, ‘The Cross-Centered Life’ is oft read, our songs point frequently to the cross. Sometimes, this bothers me. The cross is nothing more than a symbol. The cross is not unique. Christ’s death and atonement on the cross were unique, but the cross is not. Is our worship, then, truly directed towards the God-man whose death and subsequent resurrection secured our salvation, or do we focus too highly on that wooden set of beams? You may think this sounds silly… of course no one actually worships two pieces of wood nailed together. But in my mind, it comes down to a question of accent, scope and perspective.

Pastor Don often speaks of placing ‘accents’. Thankfully, this is typically in the context of the Bible expressing x and y, but placing the accent on x. I fear, however, that churches may all too often place their own accents on an interpretation of the Bible. If we accent too strongly the cross, does Christ’s resurrection, ascension, intercession, etc., fade quietly into the distance? How do we approach the Bible (and God) holistically? Most churches today, I would submit to you, accent the New Testament far more strongly than the Old. Our lens is not a Biblical lens so much as it is a John 3:16 lens. We take not mere verses out of context, but entire doctrines. The hyper-Calvinists take the doctrine of election out of context. I’d list a few more examples, but I think I’d tread on too many toes. But Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, etc., all seem to accentuate certain doctrines or practices; perhaps more than is Biblically sound. My desire, then, is to be a gospel-centered church, not simply a cross-centered church. Thankfully, while we might often make the mistake semantically, I do believe that Sovereign Grace rests its gaze on the Gospel; not merely the cross.

Again, if we are to worship God holistically, as He presents Himself, how does this affect the ‘focus’ of our lives; either as individuals or churches? We have missions-oriented churches, seeker-oriented churches, discipleship-oriented churches, etc. Is it possible to simply have a God-oriented church, and do away with these other foci? In 21st century America, there are as many flavors of Christians as there are Baskin Robbins. When do these flavors cross the line in skewing Biblical perspective into a compartmentalized worldview?

Idolatry is a much trickier topic than most think. It deals with far more than worshipping some sort of totemistic icon. It deals with far more than placing others, money, ambition, self, etc., above God. It deals with our very worship of God, our very conception of God. I challenge you to seek out the idolatry in your own life, your church, your various Christian organizations. I guarantee it is lurking there, in some fashion or another… and the sooner we spot it, the sooner we can return to a Biblical perspective of God.

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to condemn C.S. Lewis for portraying God as Aslan (even if he has confused a number of people). Nor do I feel it is my place to condemn medieval art; the majority of which deals with portrayals of the Godhead. Simply use caution, and examine yourself closely. What provokes you to worship? A 21st century portrayal of God? A 13th century portrayal of God? An allegorical portrayal of God? Anything less than a Biblical portrayal is provoking us towards idolatry: the worship of our own conception of God. Let us abandon our own narrow shortsightedness, our futile subjectivity, our sinful biases and worship the immutable God, Yahweh: I Am that I Am.

Faculties and Faith

2004-09-29T02:54:00.001-04:00

It’s been more than a month since my last entry. In some sense, I’m starting again from scratch. To be honest, I don’t think I’m going to post on federal representation and reprobation (if you really need to know about it, I’ll let you borrow a book that does a much better job than I could). I will still post about revival one of these days, maybe liturgy as well. In the more immediate future, I plan to post about the second commandment and adoption (this is the mega post I alluded to in my profile).

There are two reasons I stopped posting. I should clarify that statement. There are two primary reasons I stopped posting. Firstly, I’ve become even busier than normal this semester. Secondly, one of my expressed purposes of starting this crazy website was to increase the number of spiritual (I hate to use that word) conversations between myself and my Christian and non-Christian friends. Heck, even strangers. To be honest, that part has failed somewhat miserably. Now, I am as much to blame as others. All the same, I can’t express my annoyance at the IMs, e-mails, even face to face questions I’d get. “When are you going to post again?” “What are you going to post on?” Yet these people wouldn’t talk to me about what I had already posted, claiming it was too philosophical or theological, or I’d covered everything that needed to be said. Now, if you’re a fairly intelligent person, you can’t really claim the former (and if you DO, all the more reason to talk to me about it). Unless you’re really stupid, I hope you wouldn’t honestly believe the latter.

In a partial attempt to rectify the situation, I’ve begun meeting with people 1:1 as often as I can manage. And now that I’m doing that, and trying to be more intentional myself about guiding conversations into slightly deeper waters than Frisbee, skipping class, how hot Partusch and I are, etc. (OK, not ALL conversations), I feel like I can revive the site. Plus, I have a lot I’d like to post about. Mostly to get Dad’s input. But I want all of yours as well. Please. I’m begging. With that, it’s off to the posts.

And to start us off… * drum roll *

The Human Faculties

By faculties, I mean the mind (or logos within, if you’re into Greek philosophy), emotions, feelings, sense-perception, even your physical ability to experience, in some sense… basically, every basis you could provide for any kind of epistemology, no matter how strong or weak that basis might be. Basically, I aim to exclude only that which is driven volitionally or by a Divine source; namely the will and faith.

Now, under perfect circumstances, I believe in two coinciding realities. All human faculties are meant to affirm one’s faith, yet in the aspect of causality, all human faculties are subservient to the volitional will combined with one’s faith. Thus, in some sort of analogical sense, faculties could be compared to our works. Though works affirm our faith, they add nothing to our justification or salvation, and are a result of our faith, not a cause. I say that these coinciding realities occur under perfect circumstances; sometimes only a mere vestige remains in our less than ideal circumstances.

I believe God has provided me with a unique challenge, a veritable ‘thorn in my flesh’ about which I still struggle daily to be thankful. In using the word ‘unique’, I am speaking of the extensive nature of this challenge, not its existence, which I believe to be almost universal. The challenge is this: all too often, my faculties not only fail to affirm my faith, but even go so far as to attempt to counteract or counterbalance my faith. Again, the analogy of works holds forth. How often do you come to the end of a day, wondering whether a Christian would really do all that you’ve done, wondering whether a Christian faith really results in the works you committed that day? Additionally, my faculties squirm and rebel against the idea of being truly subservient and obedient to my volitional will and faith.

A man once instructed his congregation to ‘preach the Gospel to yourself every day’. I believe D. Martin Lloyd-Jones was the originator of the phrase, though Jerry Bridges, C.J. Mahaney and many others have picked up on it since then. Nearly all of us need a reminder of the Gospel each morning. Amidst the havoc of the alarm going off, a paper that was due yesterday, an exam you aren’t ready for, a dozen meetings with folks and organizations, forgetting to do laundry and not having any clean underwear, etc., it’s easy to forget about the God who saved us and our duty (of delight) to worship Him. I try to begin each morning with a routine. First, I sing the Gospel Song to myself… sometimes several times. In four simple lines, it captures quite eloquently the heart of the Gospel.

Holy God in love became
Perfect man to bear my blame
On the cross He took my sin
By His death I live again

Next, I read Spurgeon’s ‘Morning’ and a Psalm. Finally, I reflect on my previous day’s journal entry. I typically do my longer devotions at night, so the journal entry often reflects what I had been reading about, etc.

Now, for some people, that just might be enough. But as I mentioned before, I believe God has provided me with a rather extensive challenge. Nearly every circumstance in my life brings with it a set of faculties that buck at the idea of subscribing to Biblical notions. When I’m trying to read the Bible, pray, worship, do school, meet with folks, eat, etc., my inner being is in a constant state of turmoil. When we worship communally, many of you find your emotions fairly in line with your faith. I wish I could say the same. I wish I could say that as I lead worship, I simply relax into a state of unfettered and unforced holistic adoration. But I cannot. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, my emotions are not merely absent; they are present in an offensive fashion. My emotions cry out, “Your God does not bring comfort to your soul”, my mind cries out, “Could that time have been used in a more beneficial way”, my sense-perception cries out, “You are no different, you remain unchanged.”

For myself, to ‘preach the Gospel to myself’ falls short of necessary action. The efficaciousness of the Gospel message depends not so much on ‘preaching’ it to myself as it does on arguing it to myself, exhorting myself. In Greek, the word would be paroksusmos. This word, used in Hebrews when we are instructed to spur one another on also conveys the concept of argument, an ingratiating and persistent exhortation, the manner in which a rider spurs forth his horse, etc. Thus, while my tendency is to let down my guard and hope my faculties serve me, the reality is quite the opposite. With an unwavering constancy, I must exert my faith and will (by the grace, mercy and strength of God) to put my faculties in place.

Years ago, as a child, I realized that many things were wrong and sinful. I believed that over the course of time, I would mature and all things Christian would eventually become natural. I have learned otherwise, not only in terms of my behavior, not even in solely the motivations behind these behaviors. Rather, in the most fundamental of fundamentals, my faculties themselves, what some might classify as my personality, my individuality, my essence; therein lies a rebellion against God, a desire to continually commit actions and emit attitudes of cosmic treason.

I say none of this to deny God’s transformation of my soul. Redemption, even this side of heaven, begins a ramifying process just as extensive as our total depravity. In fact, where a lack of emotions, meditations, etc. or the opposing work of these faculties may have once caused me to question my faith, they now simply leave greater room for my faith to express its strength. Thus, I can thank God for my weakness, as difficult as I often find it. How little trust we can afford our faculties, as we grow in godliness!

Let this be an encouragement to you. You are not a lesser person because your faith may appear only as the result of activity, not passivity; argument, not relinquishment. The commandment to love the Lord with our hearts, mind and soul comes as the result of our God-given faith. Let us seek to enslave our desires, affections and faculties to that merciful gift of God. Let us look forward with anticipation to the day in which all natural inclinations direct themselves towards the worship and glory of God, but even today rejoice in our weakness.

Meet Richard

2004-08-16T18:06:00.000-04:00

Meet Richard. I met Richard in Glacier National Park. This post is the first of a number of sporadic peeks into the people I met on my road trip. Particularly, those that I talked to extensively about spiritual things. Richard is in his late 60's or early 70's. About a year ago, he retired and sold his house in Florida. He subsequently bought a bike, some camping gear, and headed north. After a few months, he arrived in Glacier. His plan is to bike around the country until his dying day. His speech was highly calculated, his manner quite charming. We both spent about four nights camped next to each other in a walk-in site. Our conversations ranged from politics to theology, from our generational differences to sex, drugs and rock and roll.

When Richard heard I was planning on attending seminary, he was quite interested. Years ago, he had been an assistant pastor in a Methodist church. Unfortunately, as our conversations progressed, it soon became obvious to me that Richard feel into the category of a cultural Christian. And an outdated one at that. His spirituality flowed from the 50's and 60's, his 'Christianity' was one of free love, comradery and peace. He was part animist, part pantheist... yet still holding onto his claim of 'Christianity'. Christ was more than a historical figure to him; he claimed to believe in the efficacy of the cross, the redemption of mankind through Christ, etc. All the same, these claims seemed to ring hollow, overwhelmed by the ringing din of the transient cultural paganism of his day.

At the same time, Richard was an avid reader of what I like to call the painfully obvious profundities. In these books, authors attack a rather simple (and already known) idea, but bolster it with aesthetically pleasing language, hyperbole and that certain touch of genius which lends that epiphany-driven (or so you think) nod of the head, and the slow, "a-haaa" as you hear a quote read from the book. (Richard's 'journal' was simply quotes from books he read. I actually keep one of those journals as well.) But once all is said and done and the day is over, you didn't really learn anything new. Often, authors will either extremely overstate or understate their point, allowing your mind to formulate the 'reality' of what they meant to say. This is a somewhat deceptive practice; if I overstate an issue, I lead you to believe that at least a strong semblance of that issue is unquestionable. If I understate it, I place a 'no less than' marker on the issue. Most of the quotes he read to me happened to be reflections on humanity vs. nature, cultural clashes, etc.

My conversations with Richard left me thinking quite hard about a number of issues. At the top of my list? How cultural is my Christianity? I came face to face with a lot of cultures this summer. Some were more disparate than others, some more curious, some more blatantly misinformed. But while it is easy to identify the idiosyncracies of a different culture, you will find it quite difficult to nail down your own. This applies on a localized as well as a general level. So... how cultural IS my Christianity? How much of it is based on living in Hershey, PA, then the east coast, then America, then the 21st century? Taking an even wider angle, we might say nowadays that Protestantism (or at least orthodox Protestantism) = Christianity... but is that an accurate statement? Are there certain things Protestantism IS (or perhaps ISN'T) that Christianity is? What does it mean for Christianity to be a 'western' religion? Are there mindsets, preconceptions, cultural norms which we must extricate from ourselves before we can approach Christianity from a truly Biblical (and not middle-class white suburban western) perspective? I've begun to formulate my own answers, but I won't post them for awhile... I have quite a few more posts on 'culture' to write. Instead, you can tell me what you think

Secondly, I thought very much on the aesthetic nature of arguments. I'm taking a class on aesthetics (in language) this Fall... which I'm actually looking forward to quite a bit (even though Kant is our main author.. ack). As I look around at many modern churches or ministries, aestheticism has overrun the content of the message itself. Some of it is glitzy, glamorous and over the top. Some I'm a bit envious of. I loved having Chi Alpha in Amasa Stone Chapel, for instance. The art and the beauty of the architecture lends itself to an increased sense of awe and respect for the Savior (at least for me). Yet I know that the early church met in houses, not cathedrals. In 'Hard to Believe', author John MacArthur talks extensively about Paul's conveyance of the Gospel; he was not an amazing public speaker, his appearance is thought to have been quite ugly, his delivery subpar to those we would label as the 'great preachers'. How important is the medium of the message? It seems as though you can err on both sides; you can concentrate to much on the delivery of the Gospel and overwhelm the message... or you can disdainfully reject any embellishment at all and begin to cloud the inherent beauty of absolute truth with a musty sterility. This has application in so many areas of Christianity; evangelism, congregational worship, art in its many forms, the presentation of doctrine and theology. Once again, I have begun to formulate my own answers to the question of Christianity and aestheticism, but once again I have much more to post. So from some of you, it would be good to hear your own thoughts... others of you... well, I hope it's something for you to start thinking about. And heck, maybe even talk to me about sometime...

The Bipolar God

2004-08-14T18:09:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday I went to a Baptist church in Denver with Clark. We attended the youth Bible study before the main service. After splitting up into girls and guys (and talking about a newspaper article) the leader finally settled down on the topics of manhood and our perception of Christ. About half way through the discussion, I knew this guy must have read John Eldredge's 'Wild at Heart'. At the conclusion of the study, he said, "As you know I've been reading Eldredge's 'Wild at Heart' recently; a lot of this comes from the book."
This book popped up in Montana as well... seems like I find it everywhere I go. I'm not even going to talk about the book (other than the fact that it must be read very carefully with several grains of salt... and only after you've read 'Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood' by Piper and Grudem). Instead, I want to talk about our perception of God. Tragically, it is very seldom that we see Him through a biblical lens.

I fear that modern Christianity has created a bipolar and perhaps even schizophrenic Lord. The two primary 'personalities' could be classified under the extremely non-Biblical headings of 'the God of the Old Testament' and 'the God of the New Testament'.

Within this bipolarity, it seems as though there are two main streams of thought. In one, God is like Janus. His attributes (primarily love/kindness and anger/wrath) are divided into two opposing sides, forming a kind of cosmic dualism within the very character of God. There is co-existence, but not without great duress. Proponents of this stream of thought essentially contextualize God as they see fit. When they need the God of wrath (to damn all homosexuals or abortionists, for instance) they pull that face out of their back pocket. When they need the God of mercy and love (at a revival or a youth retreat, etc.) they pull that face out of their other pocket.

The second stream of thought consistently accents one facet of God. I would submit to you that it is typically His love and kindness (though a few hyper-Calvinists exist, I believe, who over-emphasize His wrath). Proponents of this stream of thought seem almost ashamed of 'the God of the Old Testament', an angry and embittered Lord who has harbored incredible wrath and anger towards sin. Quite often, these folks are drawn towards universalism.
In both cases, the cross is misunderstood. It is here that we observe and rejoice in the divine unity of God's character. It is here that the perceived 'reconciliation' of His love and wrath occurs. Here we see a justice fully met, a wrath wholly satisfied, a love and mercy wholly expressed towards an undeserving people.

I won't even go into more detail than that; if you need the details, let me know and I'll send you a book or two. Rather, I'd like to bring up an angle on this subject we hardly ever talk about. Quite often, when we do talk about the wrath and anger of God, we perceive it as a wrath and anger which are completely satiated, nullified and exhausted at the cross. This is not so. God is still harboring wrath and anger towards those who will be eternally condemned. Furthermore, God is still angered by the sin of His own people. In fact, it might even make Him more angry than the sin of the unbeliever; after all, we are the recipients of God's grace and the substitutionary atonement. Our sin is not only against the God of the universe; it is against our very Savior. In the Old Testament, the primary recipients of God's wrath were the Jews, not the Gentiles. Think about that.

As Americans, I fear we have personified our country far too strongly as 'the Christian nation'. We are immune to God's wrath and anger; 9/11 was the result of terrorists and ungodliness, not the divine will of God. Furthermore, we as Christians often live as though there are no longer consequences for our sinful deeds. While I would submit to you that the eternal consequences of our sin have been nullified, the earthly consequences have not. How often does the Psalmist speak of the dreadfully deadening effects of sin, or the racking torture it causes the soul? How often does he speak of squirming beneath God the disciplinarian?

When's the last time you've thanked God for hating your sin? Not only in terms of your justification, but in terms of your sanctification? How thankful we should be! Our God is not an indifferent parent, content to let us go our own way knowing we'll 'turn out alright' in the end. No, the meanest and most minute sinful thought stirs up anger in His heart, infuriating the One we claim to love. Yet as believers, His wrath is actualized in our lives as discipline. How we should cling to Him with gratefulness!

Let us strive mightily to perceive God as He has presented Himself; through the lens of the Scriptures. Indeed, if we truly desire a satisfying doctrine, it can only be found in the unity of His character. The Biblical Christian is doubly comforted by God's wrath; it has secured his place in heaven through the cup being spilled over Christ's head... and it impells him toward spiritual growth as he reminds himself, "Against You only have I sinned." A god without wrath for sin and unrighteousness would not be worthy of worship. A god at battle within himself, at odds with himself would not be worthy of worship. The God of the Bible is worthy to be worshipped for the very reasons Christian culture is trying to abolish or at the very least diminish. Whom do you worship and why?

The Indian Story

2004-07-07T18:10:00.000-04:00

The temperature was straining to hit the upper 90's, making it the hottest day of my road trip. I had pur a large number of miles between myself and civilization (civilization being more than 6 people in one place, when you're in SD), mostly down a dusty gravel road. The western side of the Badlands is vast and largely untouched by man; its inaccessibility and lack of water leave it open only to backcountry backpackers. My car was parked on the side of the road, and I was loading up my backpack for an overnight camp. An old, red beat-up sedan pulled off on the opposite side of the road. Two Native American men sauntered out of the front seats. The younger approached me, a beer in his hand, while the driver waddled towards some bushes, pants already half down, to do his business. The overwhelming smell of alcohol further confirmed what their lazy, slouching bodies already spoke: both were drunk. Two more Native Americans sat in the back of the car, cigarettes in hand.

With my trunk and passenger door both open, I knew a quick getaway would be impossible. I also hoped it wouldn't come to that. After a few minutes of small talk, during which the older man joined us, the conversation became tense. The subject drifted sharply from the beauty of the Badlands to the Americans' treatment of these Native Americans. The men, part of the Oglala Lakota tribe, lived on a reservation in the south-western portion of the Badlands. While the tribe had once thrived, like many Native Americans, their land was slowly removed; in the case of the Lakota, in fact, much of their land had been used by the U.S. military for bomb testing and dogfight practice.

The older man (mid 30's?) who had been driving the vehicle was quite obviously the leader of the group, significantly older than the others. As they began to talk about how America had treated their people (at this point, the f-word was used profusely... I'll avoid it), their tempers began to flare. Because I was an American in their eyes, the insults, complaints and curses which were once abstract in nature soon became personal. The leader began to address me accusingly. "Are you a #&!*ing American? Do you want to mess with the Lakota? We could bury you out here in the desert right now, and no one would ever know." Between himself, his friend, and the other two men in the car, we all knew his threat was neither idle nor vain.
Under 'normal' circumstances, I should have been scared out of my mind. God strengthened me, however, and I was visibly unafraid. Interestingly enough, I had been praying the last few days that God would give me courage to share the Gospel more boldly and more intentionally; I've had the opportunity to interact with a number of folks on my road trip, and while I've been able to share the Gospel with the majority, it's often been roundabout, forced, etc. My desire is that the most natural topic for me to speak of would be the Gospel... not my school, upbrining, hobbies, etc., but how God has transformed my life. In the back of my mind, I knew that God was answering my prayer. If the situation had been slightly less tense, I would have laughed at the irony.

The leader continued to threaten me, and both he and his friend advanced towards me, the leader giving me a little push. They seemed frustrated at the fact that I was not intimidated. At this point, I knew something had to break. Two seemingly conflicting thoughts were battling over my will. I knew that God wanted me to share the Gospel with these men (how!?); I also knew that it would be nice to make it back to Hershey. This was, perhaps, the first time I had ever seriously contemplated my immediate eath. Pastor Ken insists on us thinking about our own death frequently; I do so. Generally, however, this thought takes on the abstract, "What if I die tomorrow, in a year, in ten years?" and not the very concrete, "These men are capable of killing me right here, right now." Perhaps because Pastor Ken has instructed us so well, I have very little fear of death. To live is Christ and to die is gain. Mostly, I felt a mixture of anger and frustration at the situation for this reason: if I died, I knew Mom would feel guilty and responsible for letting me go on this road trip.

I drew out my hunting knife, hoping the Lakota would decide that I was too much of a bother to fight. Whether or not I could actually bring myself to use the knife, I did not know. The younger man headed back to the car, saying he was getting a gun, while the older man continued to threaten me. For the tenth time, he asked, "Are you a #&%*ing American?" This time, however, the torrent of curses halted long enough for me to give a response.
"I am a follower of Jesus Christ before and above all else."

At this point, a miracle occurred. I wouldn't realize it for a few more minutes. The leader quickly told his friend to stay in the car. Next, he took off his shirt and shoes and knelt down in front of me. He reached toward me with one arm and asked me to do the same. His entire demeanor had changed, but I remained wary. Was this some sort of trick to get me to put my knife away? I hesitated. He assured me that this was a sign of reconciliation between his people and others and asked me again to kneel with him. I stepped back, still unconvinced. Perhaps I should have realized that God was at work by now, perhaps I did the wise thing (perhaps those are often contradictory when we use human standards of wisdom). At any rate, I used the opportunity to get into my car and lock the doors. My window was rolled down a few inches and the man approached the car. I was ready to burn out, but his words stopped me.
"Do you truly believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?"

Instantly, Romans 1:16 came to me: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." His question demanded an answer and I had to give it.

"With all of my heart and above all else I hold to be true."

At this point, I knew that if I died, I would at least die a martyr and not just an American. I rolled down the window. The next fifteen minutes were simply a furtherance of the already miraculous. The man, Tomas, told me that he also believed in Jesus. Not content to let him go at that, I began to ask him a series of questions. Why was he going to heaven? What had brought about his salvation? Who was his Lord and master? After several minutes, I realized that this man did truly believe in Christ. Whether he was saved at that very moment or had been a backslidden prodigal son, I did not know. I asked if I could pray with him, and for the next ten minutes, our hands were locked together as we sought the grace and mercy of our Lord. He in turn began to pray, thanking God for the blessings in his life and confessing his own unfaithfulness, even acknowledging his own drunkenness. Again and again he prayed, "Lord, You came to save the sick. You came to save the adulterers, the murderers, the drunks." By the time we were finished praying, the once threatening man from whom curses had flown now flowed with tears of repentance, contrition, and joy. He clenched my hand with all his strength, to the point of pain, like a baby clinging to its mother. With tears in his eyes, he said to me, "This was no coincidence. God meant for us to meet each other out here on this dusty road. And I thank God for that." As we embraced, neither of our eyes stayed dry.

Many days later, I can still see the bruises and fingernail marks on my hand. The pain in my hand has subsided, but I pray that the pain in my heart will linger until the day I die. As I drove to the Black Hills, my mind was flooded with thoughts. Why am I not more heavily burdened for the lost? Why am I hesitant in sharing my faith, in announcing the hope that is within me? Why do I doubt God's provision in the face of danger, why do I doubt His ability to perform miracles? In addition, I thought long and hard about the unsaved folks I've interacted with my entire life. In so many ways, we are more alike than myself and Tomas. Culturally, intellectually, in terms of our interests and hobbies... I have so much more in common with my unsaved friends and acquaintances than with an Oglala Lakota Indian living on a reservation in South Dakota. And yet, that is deception. As brothers in Christ, we share a singular passion and bond which I can not claim with my unsaved friends. From a divine perspective, we are the sheep and they are the goats. We are of the same family and the same inheritance.

When I return home (and back to school), I will no doubt carry with me the experience (and pictures) of the vast National Parks; I have been strongly affected by the beauty, power and majesty of God expressed through His creation. I hope, however, that the dusty, hot afternoon in the Badlands will have a longer impact on my life, as I am forced to daily rethink the life I live and the witness I display. Whether God takes my life today, in a year, or in fifty, I pray that I will live to His glory and His glory alone. Thus ends the story of my adventurous afternoon and thus begins once again the story of a renewed life with a renewed, increasingly Biblical perspective.