The Earth our home
The Earth is our home and the only one we can ever know. Put away all of those fantasies about living in space stations or on the Moon, and forget about Mars and interstellar space—they are all pipe dreams. Think about where we live for a moment. We live on a large sphere comprising land, water, life, air, heat and light (from the Sun) together traveling 584 million miles each year at a rate of 64,000 miles an hour. Fortunately for us we don't need to replace oxygen scrubbers or land our ship for repair or even replenish food and fuel. Yes folks, this space ride doesn't even charge admission!
In our attempt to venture out into space we must construct obtuse and complex machines, devise special techniques for operating them, and train the right stuff for years in advance of space missions. The astronaut trains comprehensively both mind and body in preparation for a voyage, but I doubt a distance mission would be anything except tragic. Judging by the acts of astronaut Lisa Nowak it shows that the natural mind suffers from varying degrees of concupiscence and might not handle well the pressures of long-term close-quartered co-ed travel. Especially one constricted by threats of solar radiation, space debris, machine breakdown, software glitches, food spoilage, water and air contamination, covetousness, substance abuse, etc. and the prospect of seeming endless months of travel with no easy way to turn back. Not a fun ride!
Contrast this with our Earth—the home for humans—providing every material need required for sustenance. Isn't it true that all that we could possibly want or need is found one way or another right here on this planet? Food, water, oil, natural gas, building supplies, stable elements, alloys, minerals, etc. Not to mention the knowledge of how to use these for the best practical application in order to serve the needs of mankind. With materials mined, refined, combined and designed, the human mind perpetuates his existence, fosters innovation, increases automation, and industrializes its population, leading to homogenized satisfaction (plenty for all—at least that’s the ideal).
Could a rich man with all of his possessions, travels, and experiences declare: "Oh, what boredom of form! Where is the splendor of design? The works of humanity are boring; what shall I do? My senses are so depleted of stimulation!" “To the earth: a melancholic menagerie of meaningless muck!” Definitely not! Unless this person is depressed or mentally unstable, I could never image this to happen. Likely he could never plumb the depths of experiential diversity and fabricated creature comforts. Every comfort enjoyed by the rich man has in some manner been sourced from the Earth and crafted and fabricated using a technique proper to its materials.
Now the stimulation of the senses to satisfy a taste varies with each person. Yet the meshing (connecting) of the material to the sensory surely finds efficacy (compatibility), because what are the senses but matter designed (as a condition of life) to receive impressions from an outside reality. Consider some examples of products that are designed to stimulate the senses: Sense of sight: the sprawling mansion with manicured golf course, renaissance art, Egyptian carvings, mountain vistas, sunsets and sun rises, stunning Fabergé Easter Eggs, the sight of your spouse at the gala, etc; Sense of sound: orchestras, operas, quartets, live acapella, the beautiful sound of your spouses voice, or the angelic sound of a child choir, etc; Sense of taste: Rothschild Pauillac wine, Kobe fillet mignon, Golden Opulence Sundae, homemade apple pie, etc; Sense of touch: Armani suites, personal masseuse, the smooth ride of a Cadillac, the nuptial embrace, etc; Sense of smell: Clive Christian's No.1 perfume, top grain leather, live flower bouquets in every room...
All that the senses can demand are quenched utterly and completely among the myriad luxuries afforded those with the means to achieve them. In a scaled-down way this also holds true for the common person of the West (middle/upper-class North American). All things being equal (for the sake my stated proposition) the fact that our senses are soothed, satisfied or stimulated through materials fabricated to this end is clear evidence that the Earth is our home and everything in it. "Come and behold ye the works of the Lord: what wonders he hath done upon the earth."[1]
Home on our Earth
This notion must be tempered with the paradoxical fact that home on our Earth is not always ideal. The word home is also an action word, it requires being maintained, being robustly built, being suitable to the environment. Not everyone in the world is afforded with the stability and comforts of a dwelling fit for the title of home. As for the luxuries we enjoy consider the following absurd questions.
Would you say an ideal home would blow everything around within its rooms as a tornado the sticks of a disemboweled trailer park?
How about the eruption of your furnace burning its gases, suffocating and killing your family in their beds as a volcano pukes, spits, and belches, pouring out its unsentimental wrath throughout the village?
Or maybe your fridge spawning the worst kinds of virulent and wicked pestilences tainting the trusted breast milk and bottled formula insidiously spreading its wasting conditions throughout the homes of your neighborhood?
The sudden torrent of thousands of gallons water and debris rushing mercilessly headlong into the bedrooms of your discombobulated kids whose innocent grip on life is severed like so many cars, carcasses, logs and debris tearing up the naked bodies of Burmese victims against its unrelenting tide of death?
Or the sudden electrocution of your mother casually walking past an electric outlet as a lightening bolt chars the flesh up those seeking safety under a tree only to be the victim of a random assault of nature's fury.
I could go on with these extreme examples. In any of these examples would you call this place your home? Certainly not! Yes some of these conditions afflict our brothers and sisters at the places they make home on our Earth.
As a Christian I struggle with understanding the prodigious human suffering happening all over the world—most recently in Burma and China. A very disturbing example was the death of 900 children when the school fell down on them during the earthquake. When I imagine the creative work exerted by God to indwell life (ζωὴ) into a child and the critical importance of a completed life forming the linchpin of salvation, to exist such concentrated pilfering of Christ’s children by movements of dumb stuff (things like globs of water, chunks of stone, and wood logs, as we would have during an earthquake or a hurricane). For these things to extinguish the brilliance of breath God breathed defies my comprehension. I haven’t found a category to slot these actions, and I pray God for grace to help me understand why they happen.
But I hear some say, “Who cares? If the laws of physics are so fashioned so as to reliably produce results from observation for over 400 years (modern scientific method) why shouldn't I demand to have that same stability repeated for my home--the home that God has supposedly created for me, and supposedly nurtured with his own grace! Why does he make it so difficult to prepare a habitation suitable for the environmental conditions? Yes, I realize bribery and poor workmanship are likely to blame when the earth shakes and everything crumbles. That’s not the point. The question is why is it so difficult to hold back the chaos of nature?
The fact is that things rip, slip, tip, flip, whip, and zip all on their own by virtue of their material properties.
Well you see the paradox: the home that harbors safety is fickle, double-faced and defective. The following wisdom from Augustine might help put things into perspective, "As for the greater governance of divine providence, everything that happens has a purpose even though the causes are hidden."[2]
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NOTES
[1] Ps 45:9
[2] City of God, Bk 7 ch 8
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Does he talk about Armageddon?
I can remember my first call with Elsie the Jehovah's Witness. Having gotten my name and phone number from a mutual friend, I was expecting her call any time by now. When she called, the sound of her voice was sincere, certain, and seasoned. She would ask me leading questions to find an angle, and make assertions to get a rise. Duly I would stand up with certitude and defend my case (my faith, my Christ; saving face), figuring I was on the attack. My patchwork of half-baked philosophical and theological understanding (and by the way, I'm still not a good baker) produced some interesting results, though no doubt less systematic than Elsie's. Plenty of times during our many calls she would find a slippery edge from my reasoning and without a sure footing cause her perceivable aggravation. I would sense the urgency in her exasperated tone at my apparent cavalier reception of the upcoming Armageddon. I was not trying to get her upset, but I was also holding back indignation (as I thought then): why can't this woman get it! Why does she persist in propping up this Johnny-come-lately, works-based, New York headquartered corporation? I tried to "run her through" with many of my own remarks hoping to bust through her reasoning (by the way, I'm no rhetorician).
I was wrong. I don’t think this way now, because a belief system grounds itself upon complex and seemingly haphazard events (providence?) that tie together over spans of time and geography; mix that with the solidification of personal identification, gratification, and validation through communing groups of adherents; and to top it off a mind reaching for and apprehending at different strata of wisdom—bottom line: people are complicated—don’t try to reduce them to caricature play things!
Most of the time the conversation would degenerate. She would lose her angle or run out of assertions, or questions (I was not as good at asking questions; she would tend to drive the discussion). Finally, during one conversation I was asked with a fairly stern tone, "What have you done for Christ?" I don't recall my answer, but I remember my internal sense that I was being told that Christianity required doing works in exchange for salvation, yet I felt that this was a totally false and impossible standard to expect of all believers. Consider that most westerners do not do nearly as much as they ought (myself included) to advance the cause of Christ, much less adopt a lifestyle free of hypocrisy (as much as can be gifted by God’s Spirit to those who ask, and all things considered). I was empathetic toward her situation—a big part of her life was devoted to the Kingdom, perhaps with a certain expectation of recompense? Maybe so (the reward I mean), but who really knows anyway?
It was a long time before my next phone call from her.
Finally out of the blue I received a message that Elsie had called. Now I had told her a year before that I was going to investigate the claims of Watchtower Bible and Tract Society vs. orthodox Christianity (as I then called it). Being led by so many fortuitous circumstances I ended up back as a Catholic believer and was slowly but surely having my outlook on thing changed dramatically (for the better). (It has been a very unusual growth process (from Catholicism as a child to pagan, to protestant believer, back to Catholicism (and then some!). By means of careful reasoning and analysis of the facts, I knew for sure that I could never rightly accept the claims of either the Society at large or their authority. I know she was disappointed that I was dwelling in (ἐσκήνωσεν) Christendom—perhaps in her mind she was thinking: Oh that lost young man! Joining that evil whore of a religion, ranked among believers who are worse than ignorant! Laodicean I say! The conniving parlor pigs of popery consuming Christ’s carrion feasting at Satan’s table! What claims have they over the true witnesses of Christ? Those beautiful Earthly class who venerate that good and faithful servant.
I'm being sarcastic here. I don’t know what she was thinking, because I can’t experience her thoughts directly. Anyway, she was probably not pleased about it.
We chatted more about my reversion to Catholicism and how I now attend Mass regularly. Her question to me about the priest was, "Does he talk about Armageddon?" This question gave me the sense of just how single-dimensional and narrow her religion seemed (at least as she presented it, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to those JW’s who don’t constantly worry about the end of the world). As I compare this (her JW formula) to the immense variety and depth of thought, spirituality, and history of the Catholic Church (courageously assimilating the best of human thought, work, and even respect for separated brethren, those minority religions (Jehovah’s Witnesses included) and the other great world religions). I couldn't help but think this frame of mind (i.e., focusing on eschatology with singular purpose) cannot be conducive to nurturing a deep and fulfilling relationship with Christ. Who knows when we might get scooped up and carried off to sure and deserved judgment? This type of paranoia is truly unsettling.
However, that being said I can attest that I did not suffer from as much anxiety during this call—I didn’t lose my cool, as was the case on other calls with Elsie. I felt that my new religion (or as I should say, choosing adoption into the Universal Church) gave me a wide view of things so as not to get all worked up about this or that religious dogma or precept. That is not to say I have become some kind of wishy-washy libertarian limp wrist. No, far from it! What is becoming clear to me is that we must connect with people where they’re at right now, and not try to bind their arms and ankles with crafty sophistry and wrestle them down—even if that were possible (be it with the truth or falsehood).
Again, it comes back to the fact that we are limited by degree to understanding ultimate truth. We rely upon the Holy Spirit (her Church included) for revelation, illumination, clarification, and proper formation. No body has the corner on the truth, and if one truly has this corner it is likely on the first floor of a spiring tower.
I was wrong. I don’t think this way now, because a belief system grounds itself upon complex and seemingly haphazard events (providence?) that tie together over spans of time and geography; mix that with the solidification of personal identification, gratification, and validation through communing groups of adherents; and to top it off a mind reaching for and apprehending at different strata of wisdom—bottom line: people are complicated—don’t try to reduce them to caricature play things!
Most of the time the conversation would degenerate. She would lose her angle or run out of assertions, or questions (I was not as good at asking questions; she would tend to drive the discussion). Finally, during one conversation I was asked with a fairly stern tone, "What have you done for Christ?" I don't recall my answer, but I remember my internal sense that I was being told that Christianity required doing works in exchange for salvation, yet I felt that this was a totally false and impossible standard to expect of all believers. Consider that most westerners do not do nearly as much as they ought (myself included) to advance the cause of Christ, much less adopt a lifestyle free of hypocrisy (as much as can be gifted by God’s Spirit to those who ask, and all things considered). I was empathetic toward her situation—a big part of her life was devoted to the Kingdom, perhaps with a certain expectation of recompense? Maybe so (the reward I mean), but who really knows anyway?
It was a long time before my next phone call from her.
Finally out of the blue I received a message that Elsie had called. Now I had told her a year before that I was going to investigate the claims of Watchtower Bible and Tract Society vs. orthodox Christianity (as I then called it). Being led by so many fortuitous circumstances I ended up back as a Catholic believer and was slowly but surely having my outlook on thing changed dramatically (for the better). (It has been a very unusual growth process (from Catholicism as a child to pagan, to protestant believer, back to Catholicism (and then some!). By means of careful reasoning and analysis of the facts, I knew for sure that I could never rightly accept the claims of either the Society at large or their authority. I know she was disappointed that I was dwelling in (ἐσκήνωσεν) Christendom—perhaps in her mind she was thinking: Oh that lost young man! Joining that evil whore of a religion, ranked among believers who are worse than ignorant! Laodicean I say! The conniving parlor pigs of popery consuming Christ’s carrion feasting at Satan’s table! What claims have they over the true witnesses of Christ? Those beautiful Earthly class who venerate that good and faithful servant.
I'm being sarcastic here. I don’t know what she was thinking, because I can’t experience her thoughts directly. Anyway, she was probably not pleased about it.
We chatted more about my reversion to Catholicism and how I now attend Mass regularly. Her question to me about the priest was, "Does he talk about Armageddon?" This question gave me the sense of just how single-dimensional and narrow her religion seemed (at least as she presented it, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to those JW’s who don’t constantly worry about the end of the world). As I compare this (her JW formula) to the immense variety and depth of thought, spirituality, and history of the Catholic Church (courageously assimilating the best of human thought, work, and even respect for separated brethren, those minority religions (Jehovah’s Witnesses included) and the other great world religions). I couldn't help but think this frame of mind (i.e., focusing on eschatology with singular purpose) cannot be conducive to nurturing a deep and fulfilling relationship with Christ. Who knows when we might get scooped up and carried off to sure and deserved judgment? This type of paranoia is truly unsettling.
However, that being said I can attest that I did not suffer from as much anxiety during this call—I didn’t lose my cool, as was the case on other calls with Elsie. I felt that my new religion (or as I should say, choosing adoption into the Universal Church) gave me a wide view of things so as not to get all worked up about this or that religious dogma or precept. That is not to say I have become some kind of wishy-washy libertarian limp wrist. No, far from it! What is becoming clear to me is that we must connect with people where they’re at right now, and not try to bind their arms and ankles with crafty sophistry and wrestle them down—even if that were possible (be it with the truth or falsehood).
Again, it comes back to the fact that we are limited by degree to understanding ultimate truth. We rely upon the Holy Spirit (her Church included) for revelation, illumination, clarification, and proper formation. No body has the corner on the truth, and if one truly has this corner it is likely on the first floor of a spiring tower.