So if you're reading this post and you haven't read the last post; read the last post.
It seems providential that I stumbled across this silly article about Alfred Pennyworth (Batman/Bruce Wayne's butler); how he's Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" from the book "Fear and Trembling". Or in Kierkegaard's (the book to which this post and the last refers)"Concluding Unscientific Postscript", he may be closely linked to the individual who does not mediate his ethics/ relationship to the absolute telos, nor does he externalize them as the monastics. But he rather keeps them to himself as he relates to them absolutely, yet, the outside world wouldn't be able to tell that he is relating himself to an absolute telos. They would see him merely as Bruce Wayne's butler, doing the job of a butler. Basically Alfred lives in the faith that one day Bruce wayne will see the impossible and destructive nature of his idealism expressed in his duel identity, Batman, and repair his damaged psyche. Alfred's ethos, his absolute relationship to an absolute telos, i.e. his faith in Bruce is based on no higher ideal, or necessary reason. His faith is a pure presupposition against which he must constantly face the temptation to abandon. It is a passionate decision that keeps him from giving up on Bruce. But all of this is inward. None of it is external, or spoken, directly. So all the while Alfred expresses himself as relating relatively to a "relative telos" (like the majority of folks) he is actually relating himself to an absolute telos. In other words, a knight of faith can never be identified.
My questions are. Is the church (universal or local) required to relate itself, as if it is an individual, to the absolute telos? i.e. is the church supposed to be a corporate "knight of faith"? And if Kierkegaard is right, how shall the church be able to be a sign of the Kingdom of God, if the nature of being a knight of faith is being unidentifiable?
For me this is difficult because I think Kierkegaard's understanding of faith as presuppositional is correct, and I follow the logic of that all the way to his understanding of a "knight of faith." But I cannot reconcile that understanding and logic, with the nature and call of the church.
To be continued...
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Relevant Kierkegaard
I hear you sighing.
"Matt says that his blog is about everything, but I think it's really about Kierkegaard, and sports."
Maybe.
But this post is not about Kierkegaard or his philosophy per se. It's about a Kierkegaard quote that is particularly relevant to a discussion which I've forced upon the parishioners of Steamtown Church via the teaching blog at steamtownchurch.com. So I'm linking them.
The quote:
"What has particularly helped mediation to grow and prosper in the ethical sphere is the deterring way in which the monastic movement of the Middle Ages has been used. People were made to believe that the existing person's absolute respect for the absolute "telos" (purpose, goal, end) would lead to entering the monastery. The movement itself was an enormous abstraction, monastic life a continued abstraction, so that life would be spent in praying and singing hymns--instead of playing cards at the club. If it is permissible as a matter of course to caricature the one, then it surely must also be permissible to depict the other as it has caricatured itself. In order, then, to stop the monastic movement, from which worldly wisdom has known how to derive great advantage, which even now it sometimes uses to preach indulgence from all engagement with the religious, (indeed in a Protestant country where Protestantism has prevailed for three hundred years, where anyone who wanted to enter a monastery would get into even greater difficulties than was the worried father who wrote: Where shall I send my son to school; in the nineteenth century, in which secularism is triumphant, we now and the stillhear a pasot who, in a discourse urging his listeners to participate in life 's innocent joys, warns against entering the monastery; one hears this and sees, behold the pastor is so gripped by his subject that he perspires and wipes away the perspiration)--consequently in order to stop the monastic movement people hit upon this foolish talk about mediation. Just as it is foolish talk to bring up God's name in ordinary chatter, so also is it foolish talk to place the absolute "telos" on the same level as the rank of captain of the popinjay shooting club and the like. But even if the Middle Ages erred in eccentricity, it by no means follows that mediation is commendable...the monastic movement is a passionate movement (related to what the Greeks also had, passion), as is appropriate with respect to the absolute "telos" and to that extent is far preferable in its nobility to the wretched brokerage wisdom of mediation."
It's important to note that although Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation, (modern day Protestantism/the evangelical of my other blog)he does criticize the monastic movement for wanting to make the absolute telos external as opposed to internal. The whole of that particular argument is the assertion that one compromises the absoluteness of the absolute telos my making it external. That's not the goal of this particular blog post, although it's related and interesting. But now suffice it to point out the reason that Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation. However, I might come back to discuss what exactly we should prefer as existing individuals if not mediation, or monasticism. In short, Kierkegaard would argue for a private yet passionate filled ethos or spirituality that could not be detected by anyone accept the one possessing it. I'm not very comfortable with that idea. But I do like the point he's made in the quote about the preferable nature of monasticism over mediation, i.e. the victory of passion over the tyranny and paganism of balance.
"Matt says that his blog is about everything, but I think it's really about Kierkegaard, and sports."
Maybe.
But this post is not about Kierkegaard or his philosophy per se. It's about a Kierkegaard quote that is particularly relevant to a discussion which I've forced upon the parishioners of Steamtown Church via the teaching blog at steamtownchurch.com. So I'm linking them.
The quote:
"What has particularly helped mediation to grow and prosper in the ethical sphere is the deterring way in which the monastic movement of the Middle Ages has been used. People were made to believe that the existing person's absolute respect for the absolute "telos" (purpose, goal, end) would lead to entering the monastery. The movement itself was an enormous abstraction, monastic life a continued abstraction, so that life would be spent in praying and singing hymns--instead of playing cards at the club. If it is permissible as a matter of course to caricature the one, then it surely must also be permissible to depict the other as it has caricatured itself. In order, then, to stop the monastic movement, from which worldly wisdom has known how to derive great advantage, which even now it sometimes uses to preach indulgence from all engagement with the religious, (indeed in a Protestant country where Protestantism has prevailed for three hundred years, where anyone who wanted to enter a monastery would get into even greater difficulties than was the worried father who wrote: Where shall I send my son to school; in the nineteenth century, in which secularism is triumphant, we now and the stillhear a pasot who, in a discourse urging his listeners to participate in life 's innocent joys, warns against entering the monastery; one hears this and sees, behold the pastor is so gripped by his subject that he perspires and wipes away the perspiration)--consequently in order to stop the monastic movement people hit upon this foolish talk about mediation. Just as it is foolish talk to bring up God's name in ordinary chatter, so also is it foolish talk to place the absolute "telos" on the same level as the rank of captain of the popinjay shooting club and the like. But even if the Middle Ages erred in eccentricity, it by no means follows that mediation is commendable...the monastic movement is a passionate movement (related to what the Greeks also had, passion), as is appropriate with respect to the absolute "telos" and to that extent is far preferable in its nobility to the wretched brokerage wisdom of mediation."
It's important to note that although Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation, (modern day Protestantism/the evangelical of my other blog)he does criticize the monastic movement for wanting to make the absolute telos external as opposed to internal. The whole of that particular argument is the assertion that one compromises the absoluteness of the absolute telos my making it external. That's not the goal of this particular blog post, although it's related and interesting. But now suffice it to point out the reason that Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation. However, I might come back to discuss what exactly we should prefer as existing individuals if not mediation, or monasticism. In short, Kierkegaard would argue for a private yet passionate filled ethos or spirituality that could not be detected by anyone accept the one possessing it. I'm not very comfortable with that idea. But I do like the point he's made in the quote about the preferable nature of monasticism over mediation, i.e. the victory of passion over the tyranny and paganism of balance.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Baseball is for People Who Are Not Bored Easily
Baseball is a sport that doesn't need its romantic fans to defend it. And it is a sport for the romantic. It was America's pastime when America was romantic instead of cynical. I wonder if football is the cynics sport. I believe I could make a case for that, but that's neither here nor there.
Baseball is not in need of defense because the reason for which it's critics balk is totally subjective. How many romantic ways can one write that Baseball is boring? At least the romance employed by Baseball enthusiasts, is multifaceted, if not nuanced, and even at points objective. All the talk, the humor and hyperbole, by baseball's critics puts one thing on display. They think Baseball is boring. How can I persuade them that it is not boring? The fans of baseball can wax eloquent, and speak poetically about the ins and outs of baseball's intricacies, but if it's boring it's boring. Besides rhetoric is a lost art. An attempt to transfer enthusiasm may be the best method of persuasion.
The difficulty with Baseball in particular, when trying to persuade through enthusiasm, is that the enthusiasm which exists for baseball is an enthusiasm of knowledge. In other words, you have to know it to appreciate it, and you must know it on a deeper level in order to really know it. Furthermore, to appreciate it truly, to make the leap from hater, to tolerater, to spectator, to appreciater, and finally to enthusiast, you have to experience it existentially. And in all of these moves/leaps, essentially qualitative leaps, words can only build to a level of persuasiveness allowed by the subject. The critic must want to be baseball enthusiast.
So I'm not going to go the route of poetic persuasion away from the opinion that Baseball is boring. Even if it can be shown that a majority of Americans are under this opinion, I am of the opinion that a majority is not a synonym for a truth. In short, what you mean to say is not that it is boring, but that is bores you. Despite everything I said. I will still make an attempt to defend baseball against the accusation that it is boring. This is why it doesn't bore me.
When you see a pitch, I see the result of a thought out decision. A decision based on data, the empirically recorded data of the strengths and weaknesses of both the pitcher and the batter. When you see a pitch, I see a pitch count which plays into the pitcher's decision about what to pitch. When you see a pitch, I see a no one on base, or 1 man on, 2 men on or the bases loaded. When you see a pitch, I'm not only checking the pitch count, or the guys on base, but how many outs there are, and how the defense is defending the particular hitter, and what the manager for the hitting team is telling the hitter to do based on the situation, and the statistical data. And that's just one pitch. Nevermind a discussion of the home run, the squeeze play, the bunt, the steal. Or watching every pitch on its ways to a potential perfect game. Or a brewing confrontation at the mound.
Of course there is the esthetics of baseball culture. That's the area most defenders of baseball swim to. I like that too. But I've nearly exhausted the reasons for not going that way. And you may never understand the culture, the appeal of a ballpark frank, and the smell of a freshly cut ball field, the smell of summer, and a manager getting thrown out by an umpire, the sound of a ball smacking a glove. These are just little things that make us enthusiasts giddy about the whole thing. That's just us. We're quirky that way. But with so much packed into every pitch. With the fate of the entire game hanging on every single pitch, and the time to contemplate that fate, you cannot say that baseball is boring. Maybe you can say that contemplation is boring. But contemplate that for a second and realize that you cannot be bored and contemplating at the same time. If you realize that your bored, then you've acted, and for a second have by focusing on your boredom occupied your own mind, and are therefore, not bored. Baseball, for those willing to go beyond the surface is not any more boring than life itself. Perhaps many think life is boring. Perhaps that's why many prefer football...
Man, I am a snob.
Baseball is not in need of defense because the reason for which it's critics balk is totally subjective. How many romantic ways can one write that Baseball is boring? At least the romance employed by Baseball enthusiasts, is multifaceted, if not nuanced, and even at points objective. All the talk, the humor and hyperbole, by baseball's critics puts one thing on display. They think Baseball is boring. How can I persuade them that it is not boring? The fans of baseball can wax eloquent, and speak poetically about the ins and outs of baseball's intricacies, but if it's boring it's boring. Besides rhetoric is a lost art. An attempt to transfer enthusiasm may be the best method of persuasion.
The difficulty with Baseball in particular, when trying to persuade through enthusiasm, is that the enthusiasm which exists for baseball is an enthusiasm of knowledge. In other words, you have to know it to appreciate it, and you must know it on a deeper level in order to really know it. Furthermore, to appreciate it truly, to make the leap from hater, to tolerater, to spectator, to appreciater, and finally to enthusiast, you have to experience it existentially. And in all of these moves/leaps, essentially qualitative leaps, words can only build to a level of persuasiveness allowed by the subject. The critic must want to be baseball enthusiast.
So I'm not going to go the route of poetic persuasion away from the opinion that Baseball is boring. Even if it can be shown that a majority of Americans are under this opinion, I am of the opinion that a majority is not a synonym for a truth. In short, what you mean to say is not that it is boring, but that is bores you. Despite everything I said. I will still make an attempt to defend baseball against the accusation that it is boring. This is why it doesn't bore me.
When you see a pitch, I see the result of a thought out decision. A decision based on data, the empirically recorded data of the strengths and weaknesses of both the pitcher and the batter. When you see a pitch, I see a pitch count which plays into the pitcher's decision about what to pitch. When you see a pitch, I see a no one on base, or 1 man on, 2 men on or the bases loaded. When you see a pitch, I'm not only checking the pitch count, or the guys on base, but how many outs there are, and how the defense is defending the particular hitter, and what the manager for the hitting team is telling the hitter to do based on the situation, and the statistical data. And that's just one pitch. Nevermind a discussion of the home run, the squeeze play, the bunt, the steal. Or watching every pitch on its ways to a potential perfect game. Or a brewing confrontation at the mound.
Of course there is the esthetics of baseball culture. That's the area most defenders of baseball swim to. I like that too. But I've nearly exhausted the reasons for not going that way. And you may never understand the culture, the appeal of a ballpark frank, and the smell of a freshly cut ball field, the smell of summer, and a manager getting thrown out by an umpire, the sound of a ball smacking a glove. These are just little things that make us enthusiasts giddy about the whole thing. That's just us. We're quirky that way. But with so much packed into every pitch. With the fate of the entire game hanging on every single pitch, and the time to contemplate that fate, you cannot say that baseball is boring. Maybe you can say that contemplation is boring. But contemplate that for a second and realize that you cannot be bored and contemplating at the same time. If you realize that your bored, then you've acted, and for a second have by focusing on your boredom occupied your own mind, and are therefore, not bored. Baseball, for those willing to go beyond the surface is not any more boring than life itself. Perhaps many think life is boring. Perhaps that's why many prefer football...
Man, I am a snob.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Final Thoughts on Lebron James
If there is one thing I've never about that Lebron, its that he's bad in the clutch. In 2006 (I think) I watched him score 25 points in a fourth quarter comeback against the defending NBA champion Pistons. In 2009 I saw him nail a three-pointer at the buzzer in game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Magic. I've seen him takeover games and single-handedly win them for the Cavs. (With the Cavaliers posting less than 20 wins this year, one wonders how many games Lebron himself won? Is that not clutch? I can't remember one game I watched in which I thought... "man Lebron really blew that one." I do remember two games last spring though, when Lebron gave up. It wasn't an outright, intentional, lay down and die affair, but it was obvious that Lebron had somehow lost his motivation to play. After the Heat ousted the Celtics last night James himself even said that a lot of his emotion came from the fact that he had finally gotten over the hump of the Celtics, the team that beat his Cavaliers in the second round last season. He admitted that he saw no way for the Cleveland roster to match up with the Celtics roster. He saw no foreseeable championship in Cleveland. He had waited seven years, and signed two contracts and had not gotten the pieces to beat the Lakers or the Celtics, hell, even the Orlando Magic. The point is to win the NBA championship. He had lost trust that his organization would ever be able to complete the puzzle to win him a championship, and you have to give it to Lebron, what he wanted was a championship. He took less money to get it. Put in this light, his departure from Cleveland is justified, and done with no less motivation than the best of us would have if we departed one job for another. Talk Show host Colin Cowherd illustrated this point well when he compared Lebron leaving Cleveland to a lawyer leaving a bad firm. He also pointed out that lawyers get to pick their first job, and that Lebron had to go to Cleveland. He had to go to the "bad firm.", and was for all intents and purposes loyal to it. I feel for Lebron. I really do. I feel he should have the right to play for who he wants to as a free agent. That's what a free agent is. And we've all heard the argument that it wasn't THAT he left, but HOW he left. There's some merit to that argument, but having psychoanalyzed myself as a Cleveland fan for the past year I've determined that while the way Lebron made "the decision" had an effect on the level of my animosity, I would've have been greatly disappointed either way. For while I believe that Colin Cowherd's analogy has merit as a defense for the decision, and I never want to be part of the fanbase that makes Lebron feel shackled to a municipality called Cleveland, which I think he sincerely loves, and respects, and sincerely regrets the way everything went down, and while I didn't take his decision personally, I will say that as a Cavalier fan that I wished that Lebron James was not only about winning a championship for himself, but wanted to win one for Cleveland, the city of the Superbowless Browns, and the Indians, who despite their magical run in the 90's lost two world series, and are without one since 1948. If anyone could have sympathy for a sports city such as Cleveland. It was Lebron James. Now it may be a lame argument to say that he should've stayed for the sake of local sympathy. I understand that in the bigger context of his personal legacy that to ask Lebron to stay for Cleveland sounds absurd, but what doesn't sound absurd, assuming that this kind of egotism is tolerable, (it apparently is not only tolerated, but sympathized with, and encouraged), is to make a case that Lebron's legacy would be significantly more legendary if he did stick it out like Jordan and bring championships to the Cleveland Cavaliers, rather than join a superstar in Miami, and manufacturing championships through personal agreements made during the Olympics rather than through blood, sweat, and tears. Again, I understand why he did what he did. And maybe we should applaud the postmodern/generation x athlete. This vision of Lebron James being Cleveland's Michael Jordan was actually in my heart and mind since the minute he was drafted. He just never got his Scottie Pippen. Here was hoping that my favorite player felt the same. Here's the disappointment in discovering that the feelings were not mutual. There are weaker individuals in character than Lebron James, to be sure, but they are not Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or Kobe Bryant. Maybe Lebron's way of thinking is a better way of thinking than those guys in the long run. Maybe we'll just have to get used to the utilitarian oppurtunist athlete? But why? Why? Why did the city of Cleveland have to be the ones that paid for the revolution?
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Lenten Lessons
So here's what I know about lent:
You give up something during Easter season in order to realize something deeper about your life.
I'm embarrassed that after I celebrated it this year that I am not able to articulate it any better than that, so I sit her blogging on my second day of using facebook again not sure if I celebrated lent at all.
What's equally as disturbing is that I'm not sure that I should've kept Lent. I'm not a Catholic. When I told a Catholic friend about me kept Lent, he knowing that I am not a Catholic, said, "You're not a Catholic." And he seemed offended. But for what's it's worth, the following was my justification for keeping it, at least in my own head.
Even though I am not a Catholic, I feel that I am a part of the history of Christ that has been unfolding in the history of the church of which Catholicism and Protestantism are a part. I look at lent the same way I look at fasting. Fasting to me seems to be a really good thing because denying ourselves seems to be a really good thing. It focuses our attention. It has the ability to show us something about ourselves we might not have seen because of the habitual lifestyles we lead. A facebookless Matt is a different Matt than a facebooking Matt. And giving up facebook is a way for Matt to figure out if he really needs facebook to be a better Matt. Discipline in general seems to have more positives than negatives. A disciplined life is a happy life in my estimation, and it takes practice and discipline in order to be disciplined. Fasting is also counter-intuitive, but then so is discipline, so I think maybe happiness is counter-intuitive. But this makes sense. Think about what we would become if all we did was pursue our immediate impulses. I think our lives would suck. I think. Lent is an opportunity for us to discipline ourselves to discipline ourselves. And to continue speculating, perhaps in turn teaches us how to commune better with God, since it takes discipline to do that.
Alas, that being my justification as a protestant keeping Lent, I may not have done so as a Catholic. I suppose to some degree that's okay, but you Catholics out there are free to tear to me to shreds on this one. I'm standing in the middle of the street. I'm not moving and you're coming down the street on your two-wheeler, maybe you have a bat-pod. I'm not moving, so hit me if you like. I'm a target.
Anyway, if I haven't learned anything about Catholicism, or the significance of Lent, I have learned something by giving up facebook. And I tend to believe that my experience was spiritual.
I'm not sure yet if the distance I felt from my relationships had anything to do with facebook, but I am already starting to see the connection between my lack of facebook and my lack of feeling connected with my friends. I mean that's not a difficult connection to see. But what I wonder is if this is really sad and I'm addicted to facebook in an unhealthy way, or if I am just a human living in the technological age, but still human and need to be connected. Perhaps part of the problem is that there are not many things that I connect with people about. I like difficult things like philosophy, theology, religion, sports, and 20th century American novels, and stream of consciousness weirdness. Facebook was a way for me to wax eloquent with a witty status or something and get a response, a connection from a friend.
Perhaps this is just classic overthinking. But here's a thought that's a little more universal maybe. Is the feeling of being connected through facebook human connection, or is it superficial? If my feeling unconnected is a result of not being connected to facebook, and I begin to feel better now that I'm on facebook, shall I as a modern person question the possibility of true human connection in my lifetime? Well, maybe I better not go that far. I am married and feel extremely connected to my wife and in more ways than sexual. But the real question is; if I should conclude that my lack of connection was due to my fast from facebook, should I think twice about getting connected again? The broader question being asked, which is totally another post is; what is modern man, and should he fear his machines and technics? Are they merely giving him a different way to express his drive for human connection, or are they giving him a totally superficial experience and alienating him altogether? Or... are we alienated either way and doomed to a life of anxious desire for a connectivity we cannot completely understand or fulfill?
In the end, my lenten experience brought me know closer to understanding Lent, Catholicism, or the plight of modern man. But it did heighten my awareness of the reality of existing as a modern man and brought some of the questions that were sitting by the punch bowl, in the dark, away from the dance floor to the dance floor. And I think it was a valuable experience then, since these questions seem very urgent and relevant.
You give up something during Easter season in order to realize something deeper about your life.
I'm embarrassed that after I celebrated it this year that I am not able to articulate it any better than that, so I sit her blogging on my second day of using facebook again not sure if I celebrated lent at all.
What's equally as disturbing is that I'm not sure that I should've kept Lent. I'm not a Catholic. When I told a Catholic friend about me kept Lent, he knowing that I am not a Catholic, said, "You're not a Catholic." And he seemed offended. But for what's it's worth, the following was my justification for keeping it, at least in my own head.
Even though I am not a Catholic, I feel that I am a part of the history of Christ that has been unfolding in the history of the church of which Catholicism and Protestantism are a part. I look at lent the same way I look at fasting. Fasting to me seems to be a really good thing because denying ourselves seems to be a really good thing. It focuses our attention. It has the ability to show us something about ourselves we might not have seen because of the habitual lifestyles we lead. A facebookless Matt is a different Matt than a facebooking Matt. And giving up facebook is a way for Matt to figure out if he really needs facebook to be a better Matt. Discipline in general seems to have more positives than negatives. A disciplined life is a happy life in my estimation, and it takes practice and discipline in order to be disciplined. Fasting is also counter-intuitive, but then so is discipline, so I think maybe happiness is counter-intuitive. But this makes sense. Think about what we would become if all we did was pursue our immediate impulses. I think our lives would suck. I think. Lent is an opportunity for us to discipline ourselves to discipline ourselves. And to continue speculating, perhaps in turn teaches us how to commune better with God, since it takes discipline to do that.
Alas, that being my justification as a protestant keeping Lent, I may not have done so as a Catholic. I suppose to some degree that's okay, but you Catholics out there are free to tear to me to shreds on this one. I'm standing in the middle of the street. I'm not moving and you're coming down the street on your two-wheeler, maybe you have a bat-pod. I'm not moving, so hit me if you like. I'm a target.
Anyway, if I haven't learned anything about Catholicism, or the significance of Lent, I have learned something by giving up facebook. And I tend to believe that my experience was spiritual.
I'm not sure yet if the distance I felt from my relationships had anything to do with facebook, but I am already starting to see the connection between my lack of facebook and my lack of feeling connected with my friends. I mean that's not a difficult connection to see. But what I wonder is if this is really sad and I'm addicted to facebook in an unhealthy way, or if I am just a human living in the technological age, but still human and need to be connected. Perhaps part of the problem is that there are not many things that I connect with people about. I like difficult things like philosophy, theology, religion, sports, and 20th century American novels, and stream of consciousness weirdness. Facebook was a way for me to wax eloquent with a witty status or something and get a response, a connection from a friend.
Perhaps this is just classic overthinking. But here's a thought that's a little more universal maybe. Is the feeling of being connected through facebook human connection, or is it superficial? If my feeling unconnected is a result of not being connected to facebook, and I begin to feel better now that I'm on facebook, shall I as a modern person question the possibility of true human connection in my lifetime? Well, maybe I better not go that far. I am married and feel extremely connected to my wife and in more ways than sexual. But the real question is; if I should conclude that my lack of connection was due to my fast from facebook, should I think twice about getting connected again? The broader question being asked, which is totally another post is; what is modern man, and should he fear his machines and technics? Are they merely giving him a different way to express his drive for human connection, or are they giving him a totally superficial experience and alienating him altogether? Or... are we alienated either way and doomed to a life of anxious desire for a connectivity we cannot completely understand or fulfill?
In the end, my lenten experience brought me know closer to understanding Lent, Catholicism, or the plight of modern man. But it did heighten my awareness of the reality of existing as a modern man and brought some of the questions that were sitting by the punch bowl, in the dark, away from the dance floor to the dance floor. And I think it was a valuable experience then, since these questions seem very urgent and relevant.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Existential Christianity
Existentialism is the doctrine that existence precedes essence. But is existentialism defining it's own essence before examining its existence? This apparent contradiction is only problematic if we locate the problem in the definition. But perhaps the problem is in the label, existentialism. The axiom; the a priori, of the ideal in question is that existence precedes essence.
When we think in terms of existence and not essence we find that existence presents problems of which essence thinking could never conceive, and therefore never solve, and our existence problems are real. However, what if they are not real? How would we know that our existential experiences are real? Surely we cannot discover their falseness by examining them according to essence, that realm which cannot conceive of existence problems in the first place? How shall it have the answer to a problem of which it cannot conceive? The philosophy of essence is an hilarious Holiday Inn commercial.
Some of you are begging for examples of an existence problem that cannot essentially be addressed. That's another post. Ha. What I find interesting is the claim that the existence precedes essence paradigm is the one under which the ancient Jews and the Jewish cult called Christianity operated; the claim that God's law was not the handing down of universal principles, but instructions concerning how His redeemed culture is to live, that is exist in a surrounding and yet unredeemed world.
That existentialism is now associated with atheism is unfortunate. I for one feel as if it has been hijacked. And when we find conservative Christians dismissing the published thoughts of more moderate Christian thinkers as the "brooding existentialism put forth as Christianity" I don't know whether to laugh or bang my head against the table. Sure, existentialism bears an atheistic form, but its main prognosticator, Soren Kierkegaard, argued for an existence paradigm in order to save Christianity from being swallowed up by a humanistic worldview. I will not fall into the trap of saying that existentialism is essentially Christian, but I think pointing out that existentialism as we know it, that is, the consistent use of an existence thought paradigm, was originally thought in relation to Christianity in order to avoid Christianity's death at the hands of the essence paradigm is noteworthy because as I have discovered at this point in my life, existence driven Christianity is what makes the most sense to me.
That folks should confuse existentialism with atheism, relativism, or the denial of any abstract truth, or the affirmation that all truth is contextual is an unfortunate misunderstanding. But that's another post too.
When we think in terms of existence and not essence we find that existence presents problems of which essence thinking could never conceive, and therefore never solve, and our existence problems are real. However, what if they are not real? How would we know that our existential experiences are real? Surely we cannot discover their falseness by examining them according to essence, that realm which cannot conceive of existence problems in the first place? How shall it have the answer to a problem of which it cannot conceive? The philosophy of essence is an hilarious Holiday Inn commercial.
Some of you are begging for examples of an existence problem that cannot essentially be addressed. That's another post. Ha. What I find interesting is the claim that the existence precedes essence paradigm is the one under which the ancient Jews and the Jewish cult called Christianity operated; the claim that God's law was not the handing down of universal principles, but instructions concerning how His redeemed culture is to live, that is exist in a surrounding and yet unredeemed world.
That existentialism is now associated with atheism is unfortunate. I for one feel as if it has been hijacked. And when we find conservative Christians dismissing the published thoughts of more moderate Christian thinkers as the "brooding existentialism put forth as Christianity" I don't know whether to laugh or bang my head against the table. Sure, existentialism bears an atheistic form, but its main prognosticator, Soren Kierkegaard, argued for an existence paradigm in order to save Christianity from being swallowed up by a humanistic worldview. I will not fall into the trap of saying that existentialism is essentially Christian, but I think pointing out that existentialism as we know it, that is, the consistent use of an existence thought paradigm, was originally thought in relation to Christianity in order to avoid Christianity's death at the hands of the essence paradigm is noteworthy because as I have discovered at this point in my life, existence driven Christianity is what makes the most sense to me.
That folks should confuse existentialism with atheism, relativism, or the denial of any abstract truth, or the affirmation that all truth is contextual is an unfortunate misunderstanding. But that's another post too.
Monday, March 14, 2011
What Should We Do Today?
I walked into my favorite coffee shop and the first thing I saw was a headline that read, "Maybe 10,000 Dead". I thought, "This is terrible." This coming after a discussion with a friend about the book of Job. It all made me feel awfully self-centered because if it is true that 10,000 Japanese folks were killed, that means that there are perhaps scores of thousands of people hurting in Japan today. I am only one person here in the United States, and unless I am ridiculously self-conscious I'm doing pretty good. (Truth be told as a "Westerner" I am almost definitely too self-conscious already.) And now the more I write the more this inwardness; this inward approach to the whole topic sickens me, as if what is going on in Japan is not really happen, as if the earthquake is not real. There is no reason for me to be any less shaken in my faith about the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear explosions, than if something tragic happened in my personal life. But to take it a step further, and not to be overly cynical (trust me this post is going somewhere), all of these people, and all of us, are heading toward the same fate in the end. Given, most of us may not lose so much all at once as have many people in Japan this morning, (or it would be evening for them)but we will all lose. It's only normal for these things to affect our faith, if we have any. My main point so far is to say, if we're willing to think about it deeply, and it usually takes these catastrophes to make us think deeply about it, the whole thing can seem so absolutely absurd, but at the end of the day, regardless of the fact that it's unnatural to be as broken about the Japan earthquake, as the Japanese themselves, and certainly to some degree it would inappropriate and insensitive to purport to be; the other side of the coin is that we share a common humanity with them, a common experience, though perhaps variant in degree, of living in a world of suffering with a conscious that whispers to us that it ought not be so. To put the questions in blunt terms; "Given these sorts of "natural" disasters, why believe in God? And why should it take a personal tragedy to make us ask the question?
On one hand there is no easy way to handle it, and on the other, to try and explain in with abstract words seems both insensitive and impossible. But I have always said that faith exists for such a time as this. I don't believe this to be a comfort, nor the answer that anyone wants to hear, but I do believe its the truth, and the only thing I can say. No, there's one more thing I can say. People of the Christian faith believe that God became a man and suffered as a man, and that this is the universal atoning sacrifice for sin, but also that we now know that we have a God who knows what's it's like to suffer as a human, and now we can come to Him on terms as a human. We can say to God, "Why?!" We can explain how absurd this all seems. And we know that rarely is it the case that God answers our questions directly, rarely telling us what we want to hear, but always telling us what we need to hear, and to me He seems to be saying, "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect" How is God perfect? How did He fulfill all things? He shared in suffering. His incarnation and crucifixion were not only the end and climax of our Christian story, but also the beginning. He died as our Savior, finally, but also as our example for eternity. I think it would be very pious but finally un-Christian of us to continue to speak eloquent thoughts about God's love to one another, and never show God's love. Recall James , where James tells us that faith without works is dead faith, and to be doers of the word, not merely hearers. So what should we today?
On one hand there is no easy way to handle it, and on the other, to try and explain in with abstract words seems both insensitive and impossible. But I have always said that faith exists for such a time as this. I don't believe this to be a comfort, nor the answer that anyone wants to hear, but I do believe its the truth, and the only thing I can say. No, there's one more thing I can say. People of the Christian faith believe that God became a man and suffered as a man, and that this is the universal atoning sacrifice for sin, but also that we now know that we have a God who knows what's it's like to suffer as a human, and now we can come to Him on terms as a human. We can say to God, "Why?!" We can explain how absurd this all seems. And we know that rarely is it the case that God answers our questions directly, rarely telling us what we want to hear, but always telling us what we need to hear, and to me He seems to be saying, "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect" How is God perfect? How did He fulfill all things? He shared in suffering. His incarnation and crucifixion were not only the end and climax of our Christian story, but also the beginning. He died as our Savior, finally, but also as our example for eternity. I think it would be very pious but finally un-Christian of us to continue to speak eloquent thoughts about God's love to one another, and never show God's love. Recall James , where James tells us that faith without works is dead faith, and to be doers of the word, not merely hearers. So what should we today?
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