This Blog Has Moved

Hey WordPress followers…

You can now find me at www.thedivineitch.com. I will no longer be updating this blog and will be deleting it eventually.

Blessings!
-justin

What Do You See?

During a discussion on objective reality. How do we know there is… more.

A: So you don’t believe there is an objective reality?

B: Well, I at least don’t think we can know it.

A: (looking out the window)  Look at that tree right there.

B: Okay.

A: What do you see?

B: Uh.  A tree.  What do you see?

A: A tree.

B: Okay.

(awkward silence)

B: Okay. I see a tree. With branches. Leaves.

A: Is that all?

B: I see what once was a seed, blooming into leaves, flowers, branches.  I see a giver of oxygen and a producer of more seeds of its kind.  I see a home for insects, a climbing tower for adventurous children, and a refuge for the birds of the sky.  I see the wind blow.  I see shade under the sun.  I could go on I suppose.

A: You could walk by that tree every day and never actually see what you just described.  It doesn’t mean it wasn’t always the reality.  There is always more than what we actually see.  Always.

There’s Nothing Wrong With Asking Questions

If I were to have a problem with Rob Bell it would be that trying to figure out what exactly he believes is like trying to figure out Inception.

But that’s what we love about him, right? He provokes us, makes us think.

I had a philosophy teacher like this.

I’m currently reading Velvet Elvis. It is a fantastic book. He asks questions, just like he does in this video, that I’ve never thought of before. Questions that confound. Questions we’re afraid to ask. Questions that make you wonder whether or not you should be asking them. The funny thing is, he never clearly states his theological position in orthodox terms. He even has a section in the book about labels and how they can be misleading.

A friend of mine calls him the Steve Jobs of Christianity.

A lot of people seem to think Bell has gone off the deep end with this video. The word “heresy” has been thrown around. I don’t think this is warranted, for two reasons. First, he hasn’t made his position clear. The only propositional statement he has made is that love wins. But we have to buy his book to find out what exactly that means.

Secondly, asking a provocative question in a provocative manner is not heresy. It is a method of teaching that is used throughout the Bible.

I’m going to say something very controversial here. I think people are afraid of Bell the same way people were afraid of Jesus.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying Bell is more like Jesus than Piper or Driscoll or Justin Taylor. I’m also not saying that people are afraid that Rob Bell might be Jesus. What I’m saying is that he is using a teaching method that is more similar to Jesus. He is asking thoughtful questions that provoke us to explore our faith in a deeper way, instead of just accepting simple, facile answers.

Why does it matter to us what Rob Bell believes? Because we think we want the truth, but we don’t really. We want answers that make sense to our way of thinking.

We are afraid of what we don’t understand. We don’t like it when we can’t wrap our mind around something, so we look for labels that allow us to fit a person’s teaching into our box. We want to know exactly what Rob Bell believes so that we we will be comfortable with him, so that we can believe what he says without having to worry about asking questions that challenge us.

It’s the same thing the Pharisees did to Jesus.

“Teacher, is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” In other words, what is your stance on taxes? What is your political position? Are you conservative, Jesus?

He calls them out, because they were trying to trap him and get him to say something incriminating. Then he answers their question with another question.

“Whose image is on the coin?”

“Caesar’s”, they reply.

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s”.

And the Gospel of Matthew says they went away amazed. Because he had evaded their trap. And here is what I LOVE about this answer. It is left open to any interpretation. The Roman nationalist would walk away going, good, Jesus is conservative, or whatever. But only the true seeker – only the wise – would understand what Jesus was actually saying.

What is God’s?

Everything.

Everything belongs to God!

Even Caesar’s coins.

So Jesus asks questions that can be answered in different ways, but that makes the truth accessible to those that are truly seeking.

That’s what Rob Bell is doing.

He’s letting us discuss things among ourselves.

And truth still marches on.

Is Art All About Sex?

“Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.”  -Napoleon Dynamite

A philosophy professor named Denis Hutton said that art is nothing more than sexual selection at work.  The one with artistic skill has a reproductive advantage over the one without skills.

In other words, art is all about sex.

The common denominator in all art, Dutton says, is the attraction to “something done well.”  It is an “adaptive effect” belonging to humanity’s evolved psychology.  This was all in a Ted Talk he did called “A Darwinian Theory Of Beauty”.  Coming across this talk was a big deal for me.  In my mind, art and aesthetic beauty has always been one of the most persuasive evidences for the existence of God.  So listening to this talk made me stop.  Think.  Ponder.

Why do I think art and beauty is evidence for God?  Isn’t it easily explained by natural selection?

I am convinced there is much more to the psychology of artistic enjoyment then “things done well”.  We like music, not just because of the skill it takes, but because of how it makes us feel.  We don’t watch a magician for his skill, we watch a magician to be duped.  We watch movies because for some reason we identify with heroes and are moved by love, justice, and sacrifice.

Some of us like art that makes us think.  Some of us like art that makes us cry.  Some of us like art that makes us happy.  We like to be held in suspense, tricked, and carried away into other worlds.  We crave things that stimulate in us wonder and imagination.

Why do I think this is evidence for God?  Because the alternative is so much more implausible.

Sexual selection may be a good theory for why college guys that play guitar are more likely to get a girlfriend.  It doesn’t explain the complexities of imagination, beauty, and emotion that weave throughout the fabric our psychology.  Further, it can’t explain how art and beauty go beyond our inner emotions and unknowingly express metaphors that are open to endless interpretations (Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt write about the significance of this at length in the book A Meaningful World).

If there is no intelligent creator, than art is nothing more than a messy bi-product of natural selection.  This is kind of like saying that Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa by vomiting on the canvas.  At least, that’s how I see it.

What’s most interesting to me is that Dutton talks about evolution with a religious fervor, using phrases like “evolution tricks us”, “that’s evolution’s way of…” and “art is a gift.”  It’s almost as if in some way, he does believe in a creator, just not one that he has to be accountable to.

The T-Rex And The Stink Bug: A Love Story

I was at a church event last year at someone’s home and we did this get-to-know-people game where everyone shares their favorite animal and explains why. About thirty of us sat in a circle and went around one at a time. I was at the end of the circle, and I wanted to pick an animal that no one had picked (all the good ones were being taken), because I’m an adult and I take these games very seriously. So when it came my turn, I said, “Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

“Why?” Kevin said. Kevin is our pastor and the brilliant mind behind this activity.

“Because no one messes with a T-rex,” I said.

We completed the circle and then Kevin had us go around again.  This time our second favorite animal.

So I’m thinking, come on Kevin. This is dumb.

All the good ones were being said, even the clever ones, and I was under a lot of pressure for something original. Finally it came to me. I had the perfect animal. No one would say this. It came my turn.

“My second favorite animal,” I said, “is the stink bug.”

The room shifted nervously.

“No, really.” I built my case. “Stink bugs are content and resilient creatures. They have a lot of character. I was at Starbucks once and I noticed one right next to me in the window sill. He had fallen over on his back. I watched him as he struggled to turn himself back over. When he finally did, he just kind hung around like it was no big deal. He was right there next to me for like three hours, just hanging out. By the time I left, I felt like we were friends.”

There were a few courtesy laughs. I’m pretty sure everyone thought I was really weird.

I was not prepared for what happened next. Kevin said, “this exercise has a reason behind it. There’s some psychology in this game. The first animal is how you see yourself. And the second, is what you look for in a spouse.”

Never Underestimate A Good Pen

True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself a nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it!

-Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I have come to accept that most of my writing will suck. But for a few great ideas, you have to come up with a million. Hitchcock made a lot of mediocre movies. 90% of Emerson’s work was never published.  Etc.

Most of us never read Emerson anyway.

Record ideas, lessons, trials, wins, losses.

Write tales.  Write songs.  Draw.

Remember.

Get a pen that inspires you.  For me, gel ink, the kind that makes a mark with the lightest touch.  None of this ball point garbage (but that’s just me).

Don’t be afraid to spend good money on a pen.

Choose wisely, and be careful not to lose it.

The Cocoon Of Doubt

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it.
-Tim Keller

It is an experience I had been through before, but never to this extent.  I had come off of a spiritual mountaintop. God had felt so close I could almost touch him.

And suddenly, he was gone.

I woke up one morning an atheist.  My prayers felt like they didn’t reach the ceiling. Questions that once did not seem relevant to me were suddenly a plague, a stumbling block. I looked at the world around me and got angry, frustrated, exasperated. The circumstances of life seemed ridiculous. The sovereignty of God felt like a copout for the things we didn’t understand. Jesus the man became an unknowable figure, and the New Testament, incredulous. I became an outsider looking into Christian culture. None of it made sense to me.

I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was it something I ate? There had been shattered expectations, disappointment with God, emotional highs and lows. There had been conversations about science and religion. But it was none of those things. I had not been compelled by any arguments or even circumstances of life, but my own inner struggle. It was a feeling. A deep, unsettling feeling I could not escape. Like the Spirit of God had left me.

I echoed the cry of Job: “if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go the west, I do not find him.”

I read the Psalms over those months (sixty percent of the Psalms are laments). I related to them in ways I never have before. And through the doubt, I grew.

*****

Others were going through similar things.

Hiking on the Appalachian Trail with my old roommate Joel, I said, “you ever feel like God just disappears?” “Yea,” he said. “I’m actually there right now.”

My friend Val was going through it. And he had had conversations with others that were as well. People who had followed Christ for years, struggling with questions they had never considered before.

Then there was my friend Alyse who had become a part of our church community. She was a confessing non-believer, but seemed more passionate about truth than most of my Christian friends.  She asked questions few had thought of. She wanted to believe Christianity was true, but had doubts she couldn’t overcome.

I knew there was something in the air when soon after all of this, Pastor Jon started a sermon series at church called Masterpiece. It was about doubting the Bible and it’s credibility.

I asked Jon why this topic.  Maybe God had told him in a dream to preach on this subject.

He just said he’d been planning it for a while.

*****

If faith is a butterfly, then doubt is a cocoon.

I wish Christians would be more open about their doubts. I know that everyone has them. Many are ashamed to talk about them, feeling they’ll be judged. Others, out of fear, ignore their doubts completely.

But I believe if we embraced our doubts, it would yield a stronger and truer faith.

One may easily assume that doubt is the opposite of faith. But it’s not. The opposite of faith is unbelief. Doubt, on the contrary, is an evidence of faith.

There is a distinct difference between unbelief and doubt. Unbelief is a choice of will, a deciding not to believe. Doubt is an unsureness, a wavering, a skepticism. Doubt is a struggle.

And struggle causes perseverance.

I have come to believe that the deeper the faith, the deeper the doubt. Real faith takes risks, and to take a risk, one must have some doubt. Real faith trusts when it doesn’t always make sense. Real faith stares into the darkness and lives to tell about it.

Doubt is the cocoon that overwhelms our immature faith so that we can be reborn with the wings and colors of a truer, authentic faith.

Real faith doubts.

Defying The Nuclear Bomb

It’s the first day of 2011.  A lot of pressure for a quality first post.

I have spent the greater part of this last week planning for the year and setting goals.  For some reason there is a resistance in me to planning.  An insecurity I suppose.  Part of me resents structure, thinks it’s not in my personality to be so organized.

And there is a fear as well.  Thursday morning I had a disturbing dream about a nuclear bomb that went off amidst my planning for the future.  I think that pretty much says it all.

With conviction I press on. 

I spent a lot of the time sitting by the pleasant fireplace at the White Hart Cafe on Main Street, writing in a Moleskin, taking time to think, pray, and take pictures with the Hipstamatic App.

Defying the internal resistance, I moved forward with my end-of-the-year planning. It was a good week off. I could not have done it without the great tips I got from Chris Guillebeau’s blog, The Art of Non-conformity. I used my own variation of his personal annual review method to set various goals for 2011. Among them are my goals for this blog.

It’s simple.  I plan to publish at least one post a week.  This post doesn’t count.

Happy new year!

The Divine Itch: A Mission Statement

This blog is a result of an itch that will not go away.

On the most primal level, it is a depository for emotional, existential, and philosophical vomit.  But I trust it will be refined vomit, and I trust that calling it vomit will keep me in the clear when I write something stupid, harmful, or heretical.

To put it simply, this blog is for writing about the ideas I wrestle with.

I live in an exceptional community where people have a lot of conversations about truth, God, meaning, guacamole, and other great things.  Like all good conversations these talks last longer than the hours or minutes they take.  The cognitive ripples spread to the shores of coffee shops, restaurants, Bible studies, churches…

For me, the ripples often find themselves splashing on the pages of a journal that no one ever sees.  I figured it’s time refine those entries and bring them out in the open.

I will call them expressions of The Divine Itch.