Above Us Only Sky

I had mixed feelings reading this Slate article on heaven.
http://www.slate.com/id/2249657

When the piece began by debunking several conceptions of heaven, I was rooting for the author. I despise the Patrick Swayze, Precious Moments, All Dogs Go to Heaven version of the afterlife myth. Speaking in terms of theology, I believe that conception is an odd aberration that crept in when Scriptural watchdogs weren't looking. The Bible simply does not teach that belief. If I could speak to a gathering of evangelical leaders, I would tell them that correcting our beliefs in heaven by removing this strange and alien belief from our common practice should be a much higher priority than either gay marriage or prayer in schools.

But then the article sunk into the septic tank. The enjoyment evaporated like an ice cube in an oil spill. The writing became a tirade, another battlefield where nasty, backwards, primitive, blue-collar, fat American belief-ism dukes it out with progressive!, enlightened!, rational!, urban!, urbane! SCIENCE!

I'm not going to waste my time with such nonsense. I'm so bored with that discussion and life's too short for me to be bored. I'm done with arrogant epistemologists of either persuasion. I turn my nose at both the close-minded scientist and the ignorant Christian, both of whom are convinced that the scientific evidence shows whatever or that THE DEVIL (cue cellos) has blinded their eyes, closed their hearts and just waves away tough questions with screeching, nonsensical, counter questions.

I'm so tired of this debate. It gets nasty. It gets nowhere. And it just leaves people angry. And there's no communication. None whatsoever. This is the gravest issue and the one people tend to work on the least. To properly visualize what this type of debate inevitably becomes, imagine two 5 year-olds. Picture them screaming, caterwauling and making the most God-awful noise in the world. Now watch as they plug their own ears with their fists and try to headbutt each other to death. Now place this snarling juvenile mess in a locked latrine. Any debate touted as reason vs. faith can only rise this high.

But conversations are beautiful. They're beautiful because there's communication, connection and humanity. I love having conversations with anyone who believes anything. We can talk about baseball or manga or God. Whatever. When we do talk about God, I'm OK with them believing whatever they believe and their reasons for doing so. Often it's psychological. Sometimes it's rational. And other times, it's a complete non-sequitur. I believe in God because I'm Irish. Um, OK? I like people. I want to learn more about them. Maybe they want to learn more about me. I don't ask for it up front. If they want to know more, they'll ask. I don't like to be in the business of telling. I'm not sure I should hold the assumption that strangers are just so curious about me.

Conversations are beautiful because one human heart touching another human heart is beautiful. That's where alithea-truth exists. I'm thankful for having read Heidegger because he gave me a better word than heart-truth, which people just interpret as "feelings." Alithea-truth is not your goddamn emotion. It'll affect you emotionally, but it's not your emotion. When you take your medicine, it affects your body. But the medicine is not your body.

Alithea-truth is not fact truth. "This computer I'm using is running Internet Explorer 6 and I hate it." That sentence is an example of fact-truth, veritas-truth. Alithea-truth is Eureka, the I-Have-Found-It experience of life. An example of alithea-truth would be the pitcher on the mound realizing "I have to throw a fastball." "I have to throw a fastball." is not a fact. It's almost something of an anti-fact. Facts describe what is. "I have to throw a fastball." is a judgment concerning the future, concerning the what-is-not(-yet). For those who don't care for sports but know something of love, another example of alithea-truth is the realization "Just be yourself." It's a truth you can't check. A command, like a question, is immune to fact-checking. How do you find out if "Sit down!" or "Who's Billy Mays?" are true statements? Alithea is truth beyond truth, truth beyond fact.

The alithea-truth of God is simply "God". Although you may phrase it in a way that looks like veritas-truth - "God exists.", "God is real.", "Jesus Christ is the Son of God.", "God loves me." - the most vital part of the statement lies in the realization. Verity gives it substance. Oh, pardon me. Did you think that these were exclusive categories? They're not. "Once you hit the liver, you can hit anything." is Bas Ruten's alithea-truth of fighting. It's also the veritas-truth taught to all Mexican boxers as part of the curriculum.

Alithea-truth can't be taught. Veritas-truth can. To use John Piper's (I like him again.) famous illustration, you can't reason a person into realizing ice cream is delicious. They taste it. They like it or they don't like it. Teaching you the biology behind mint leaves and chocolate chips won't help you enjoy the taste more if you don't already like the flavor.

Without this understanding of alithea-truth, all discussions about God are absolute dung. Don't take the easy way out and psychologize the issue saying "People believe because they're scared of dying." or  "People don't believe because they want to keep sinning." Both are insulting and absurd. Cite some specious statistic and assume that the entire population sit uniformly on an issue offends common sense. Each person is an individual. Respect them as such. Treat them as such. Investigate, discover, explore the alithea-truth of their life. Ask them for it. Maybe they'll share it. C'mon reach out and touch somebody. People aren't that scary. Grown-ups only bite when you ask them to.

A Null Singularity II - Value

Would you like to win the lottery? That seems like an absurd question to ask doesn’t it? It’s FREE MONEY. There’s no way for this to be a bad thing. If you lose it all, at worst, you are no worse off than when you first started. Say that to the 8 people in this old article that I dug up.

You want a million dollars? Ten million? Ask yourself this question, first. Do you even deserve it? Why would you want something you did not earn?

Now, not all people squander their lottery winnings. Who are the ones that do? It tends to be the ones with poor financial acumen. Surprising? It shouldn’t be. If they didn’t understand money, if they didn’t have some intuitive grasp on how wealth is accumulated or how wealth is lost then they could never keep it.

So, why then I wonder is God’s grace so different? I’m thankful for it certainly, this pardon that I’ve received freely, which cost God so much, but I can’t help thinking that because I did not earn it, it can never be fully mine. Everything meaningful it seems, is meaningful because it is earned.

The love of another, the love between two mates, this I firmly believe, should be earned. Their mutual choice should arise out of their soul’s response to virtues. I choose you, beloved, because in you I see what I value. And in response, the lover should be likewise chosen, because of values. By values, I don’t mean beliefs or political stances. It could be as simple as a nice, round butt or firm breasts, bulging biceps or a powerful chest. Value could be wealth, could be education, it could be because this person will continue to supply me with drugs for a few weeks. And yes, of course, value could be things that are truly valuable as well, kindness, compassion, integrity, confidence. Anything could be a value… so long as you value it. Attraction, love, isn’t this, the commodity so highly valued by songs, Hollywood, magazine columns, ultimately traded value for value and not given freely?

What is acquired for little cannot be esteemed for much, no? Think for a moment of what life must be like for beautiful women as they are endlessly harassed by comments from men all day long. “Hey, shawty, looking FINE today!” “Hey beautiful, I just wanna talk to you for a minute!” Or at the bar, how many suits would approach offering to buy a drink, the number of doors held open for a smile, the number of winks from strangers. Is there a beautiful woman to whom any of these comments is valuable? She must know that the mouth that said it to her will just as easily say it to the next female in 5 or 10 minutes. The offer to buy a drink will just move on to the next woman if she says ‘no’. Those comments and advances given so freely mean so little.
I believe it was at a VBS class where this happened. “God sent his only son Jesus to die on a cross so that you could be saved. Do you know how much the Father loved Jesus?” “Well, it couldn’t have been very much if he died for me.” Now the right answer is actually, the Trinity lives in perfect love and harmony so this was the most painful act in history which is a testament to the love that God has for his creation, but the sarcastic answer lingers still in my mind. If it is indeed a free gift, how can it be worthwhile?

Now, I confess freely that gifts are not my love language in any which way. Things that other people give me don’t mean much to me unless they’re useful; a shirt I can wear, a knife I can cut with, a pan I can cook with. And even then it’s only meaningful to me because it’s useful. I try to comprehend how a gift can be meaningful apart from its function but the grasping of such a concept remains outside of my ability. If I can’t use it, why would it be meaningful?

And more than that, as the case of the lottery winners show, if you come into possession of something you could never acquire by your own virtue, you will most likely lose it by that same lack of virtue. In that way, what is this grace, this Christian grace? Something I’ve been given, that I could never earn, and told that I could never lose, because I never earned it. And moreover, what will that end result, that far-off “Heaven” be like? For me, I want to cross the finish line at Kona because I feel that would be the ultimate reward for sacrifice, for waking up at 5 am, for pushing my body, my spirit further than was ever comfortable. I want my reward to be a result of my effort. I don’t want it to be handed out so easily.

Upon reflection, I am incredibly thankful for grace, for a “relationship with God” as the catchphrase goes. But at the same time, I’m also deeply disturbed that it even exists as well, and that it exists apart from my own power to will or do otherwise.

A Null Singularity

The Rapture of the Nerds -- have you heard of it?

They say it's coming. They don't agree what it looks like, but the nerds say it's coming. One camp says that the machines will deliver us with artificial technology. The other says that the machines will be our physical servitors and lead us into a bright future where they will fix poverty, sickness, war, illness, injury... you name it. It will not be a pierced carpenter's hand, but a silicone and steel one that wipes every tear from your eye.

The singularity is coming. Technology is getting better. Soon, we'll have computers that give birth to better computers and code that gives rise to even more elegant code. Repent, for the Kingdom of Machines is near!

God, that sounds absolutely ridiculous.

It sounds as ridiculous as what so many Christians are waiting for.

You see, one of the hardest things about my faith is the decrepit, the frail, the overweight, the one that suffers from back problems and the one that suffers from knee problems, those that wait for a future moment of fixing. One day God will come and there'll be no crying or hardship anymore.

Have you ever seen something so unusual? A Christ-follower who has come to hate heaven.

Or at least, the version that these machine-masturbators and cloud-watchers both wait for.

What is it that makes me so upset about these mirror groups? It's their assessment of the problem. To them, the problem lays in the fact that life is hard. That life requires work. And for your work, life will often reward you with failure. That it will give you lots of failure for a lot of your effort. Every now and then, life will give you a success here or there. And not only that, life often seems to reward your enemies. People who seem to get everything so easily while you work so hard for the little you have... IT'S NOT FAIR!

It's hard for me to imagine a more depraved disposition. To me, there is nothing more depraved than giving up on your own life and nothing says surrender more than to stop looking at the present in favor of only looking to the future.

It truly sickens me to the core that so many preachers preach this from the pulpit. This is just passing, temporary, ergo, it is worthless. Do good and wait to die. The stench that such a group gives off is the smell of souls rotting while living.

Instead of fighting to the end with the cards that they've been dealt, these people seem to wait for the cards to somehow change. In heaven, everyone gets a robot side-kick and robot boots. Or mansions and streets lined with gold. Wealth that you didn't have to work for, sacrifice for, the product of a great mind and an intrepid spirit can be yours without having to have a great mind or intrepid spirit yourself. This absurd sense of entitlement is what deeply saddens me.

Look at the video below. I found it through Ross Enamait, and it illustrates to me, an admirable spirit. You know what continually frustrates me about the world we live in? It's wrong to say to fat people, "You're fat." We can't say to the weak, "You're weak." As if not pointing out a weakness would make it somehow less true. At the bottom of this post is a man who acknowledges the fact that he has crippled legs, but he has never let it remain that way.

"I'm not a porcelain doll. If you hurt me, I'm gonna get back up."
"I'm not going to lay down for you. If you put me down, then you put me down."

This is a spirit worth having! Don't wait for the bar to come down lower, teach your legs to jump higher! Don't wait for a mythical telos to arrive and everything to magically be OK, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty! Don't worry about the great world of things that you can't do, focus on what you can do and then do it. If you can only take small steps, then take small steps. Sure, you have only a small chance of making it to your goal if you take small steps but that's infinitely better than having no chance of getting there.

Where are those brave and intrepid souls who aren't afraid to give it all they got and come out looking like a fool? Where are the pioneering spirits that are willing to work and struggle?