Awhile back, some poster on a Christian discussion forum who had a habit of teasing the Christians said something about how Christianity is a faith built on guilt and fear. And I read that, and my mouth kinda hung open for a moment. And I realized how diametrically opposed that is to the truth of my faith. Because when he said “guilt and fear”, the lyrics to one of my favorite songs echoed in my head:
No guilt in life, no fear in death: this is the power of Christ in me.
Because while those who worship the Triune God are all over the spectrum on many issues, there are certain, central things we all believe – certain, central things all our versions of the Bible teach, and which, if we deny them, mark us as Not Really Christian After All. One of them is this: A Christian is ultimately absolved of all guilt, and has nothing to fear. Continue reading Christian »
I’m wondering how long it will take before philosophy finally learns to separate how and why.
I’m fully aware of the way why is used in English: it’s a substitution for “what makes it do that?” in both the mechanical and volitional sense. But I think it would do us all an enormous favor if we split it into why and how: The latter would be the mechanical sense. The former would the volitional sense. Therefore, if you ask how I tripped down the stairs, I did it because my foot caught on the carpet. If you ask why, there’s no answer, because it was an accident. (We’re leaving a god who orchestrates accidents out of this for the sake of the example. I certainly didn’t mean anything by my theoretical faceplant.) Continue reading The how and the why »
Who does? I mean, it’s hardwired into us, the drive to take control. To decide how things go. Not just to get our own food or choose our own clothes, but to have others listen to us and do what we desire, to order our lives the way we like. Weakness and dependency are humiliating. When you can’t do things for yourself, you feel you haven’t got any worth. You haven’t got any dignity. Will, drive, ambition, these are all things we do, and when our hands are tied, we wither. Continue reading Weakness »
We don’t like to let ourselves. I know I don’t. I like to be the heroine of my little story. Oh, y’know, I’ve got a future and a destiny and I’ve got talents and I can go out and do things! ‘Cause I’m brilliant! And the world tries to make us believe it. So much that is sold to us is about making us happy and us comfortable and us surrounded by conveniences and good-looking stuff. We want very much to be noticed, and liked, and appreciated, and valued, and respected, and all those other things. We want to be somebody. Continue reading The size of the thing »
It is the occupational hazard of being a naturally law-abiding person and growing up in a functional, spiritually grounded home that I should find it easy to underestimate things like grace. And to find it difficult to believe that wrongs can be transformed or that whatever I have gotten myself into, God is glad to lead me out again.
People who’ve known me a long time will probably laugh at that. If you’d told me ten years ago that I’d ever like being wrong, I would have laughed too (albeit a bit nervously). ‘Cause my mom still tells stories about the way I would come up with some completely ridiculous theory that I would defend to the ends of the earth, and throw a tantrum if anybody dared prove things otherwise.
Was thinking yesterday – it being 9/11 – about how sadness is necessary. It’s the inverse of something I’ve heard an atheist say, that in an unfeeling, impersonal, chaotic universe, joy is a fleeting thing, so we have to cling to it. G. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy that he believed that something of the opposite is true.
It seems weird: how can one be sad if one believes that the universe begins and ends in joy? Because we’re cut off from it. Continue reading Sorrowful Joy »
The problem with recasting one’s life as a story is that it’s tempting to write all the plot twists in. I do this all the time. I get anxious about any story with an “open” canon (until I was a teenager, I’d never got into a series that wasn’t finished) ‘Cause I want very badly to know what happens at the end. Partially because I want to know if all the energy I’ve invested in it is worth it, but also because I want to be able to analyse the thing as a whole, to see how all the parts fit and how everything affects everything else. If I’ve got that end in my hands and just haven’t read that far, it’s fine. When that end doesn’t exist yet… Continue reading Based on a True Story »
There comes a moment in everyone’s life (or most everyone’s life, I hope), when you realize you’ve outdone your teacher. It might be something as simple as the day your parents can no longer help you with your homework. Which may just be because it’s been a couple decades since they last took Algebra, and can’t for the life of them remember what Quadratic Equations are. We all know the famous trope of the fighter or athlete outdoing their coach. And I wonder what it must be like the day that a pianist can play a piece better than his tutor. What do you do when you hit that spot? Continue reading Running with Joy »