A thought inspired by reading a friend's blog post. But I didn't want to write the world's longest comment, so I thought I would re-post my thoughts here.
I'm not sure if anger and forgiveness are mutually exclusive. Being angry with someone doesn't have to mean that you are unwilling to forgive them, though sometimes that kind of anger can be resentment--the holding grudges kind of anger. I once read a definition of resentment that I found terribly helpful and terribly convicting: resentment is the desire for revenge that you somehow feel that you are not able to take. (Hence Nietzsche on resentment in Genealogy of Morals . . . oops, interject philosophy ramble!) I do think believing in the justice of God and especially the final justice of God is important for resolving resentment and desire for revenge and deep anger.
Sometimes other people crush us and there is nothing we can do about it because we just aren't strong enough to stop them. That's not our fault. It's also true that God just doesn't intervene every time (though sometimes) something goes wrong. But he does promise that there will be ultimate justice and things will be put right in the end. For me, the process of forgiving someone who has crushed me involves turning someone over to God in my heart--turning them over to him both for their judgment and their salvation because the cross both judges our sin and forgives it. For me it has also involved seeing myself as a sinner as well who has also done wrong and also stands as one who has received a lot of mercy and grace from God, who has received my whole life from God. So, if I know that I have received my life from God as a gracious gift, and that he has rescued me from my own brokenness, weakness, and my own sin (or that he has promised to rescue me) I also want to hope that he can do that for someone else who doesn't deserve it.
Maybe one of the best but also one of the most repulsive doctrines of Christianity is the fact that Jesus really wants to save people who have done really bad things. He wanted to save the people who murdered him and he wants to save the "bad guys" who hurt us. And he wants to save us even when we are the bad guys. And if we let him, he will. But God wanted to save Cain as well as Abel, but Cain wouldn't repent. I think the more we have suffered at the hands of other people the more this becomes real to us and we struggle to accept the cross. I think, though, the only reason why the cross is ultimately palatable is because of the Resurrection. If there weren't a Resurrection, the cross isn't good news. And if there isn't healing for our hurts now, the gospel isn't good news. But I do think God has shown us in his Word particularly and in good communities where his Word is faithfully lived and preached, that he does want to heal us. Forgiveness comes from God in that he gives us healing and gives us Jesus and makes us truly able to forgive. I think it is a mistake to treat forgiveness as if it were not a thing of mercy and grace and therefore a gift from God.
Some people speak as if forgiveness were merely an action or an act from the will that one can obey because commanded to by God. I don't believe that is true or helpful. God also commands, "Love me with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength" and "Love your neighbor as yourself". We are utterly unable to do those things without the help and transforming work of God, why would we be able to forgive without his help and transformation?
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Dreamform One: Jesus Walks Into a Dream
The first dream that I can remember that ever really mattered to me was one in which Jesus actually showed up in person. I have never had another dream like it and it certainly made me pay attention at the time.
In the dream, I was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I remember looking at the row of ships on docks off to my left, and to my right was nothing much beside sand. At some point, I remember peering down onto the deck flooring of a ship that was curiously clear--I could see straight down into the water. That was a moment of fun outside of the dream and wonder within the dream. At some point--I had no sense of being in a hurry--I wandered up to where Jesus was. He was working on mending some nets and seemed also in no particular hurry.
If I was surprised to see him there, I wasn't very much surprised: it was the sort of surprise you have when you're not exactly expecting to see a friend to show up in a place where he or she might very well naturally show up, but you like your friend so much you are excited to see him or her anyway. So I was a little excited to see Jesus, but not crazy excited to see him as I would be if I turned around in my living room now and saw him standing there.
I knew very clearly in the dream that I could ask Jesus anything at all that I wanted to, although I had no particular sense of anxiety or nervousness about it. So, naturally, I asked him some wandering and convoluted question about how one should interpret some complicated problem of "authorial voice" in Scripture. My question had something to do with both epistemology and ontology and I think had some relevance to some modernist quibbling about the inspiration of Scripture. Honestly, I don't quite remember exactly what I asked, but since Jesus never quite got around to answering my question, I suppose that didn't matter too much. What did matter and what was remarkable and what was the lesson for me was how he responded to my question.
The first thing Jesus did was actually think about my question. He mulled over my question for a moment, asked me a clarifying question that went along the lines of, "So what you're really asking is x because of y and z?" In turn, I thought about it for a little while and rephrased my question with his question in mind. All the while, I noticed this sort of scrawny, mopey looking young man with quite the bush of thick brown hair sort of skulking around the edges of our conversation. At some point he wandered off down a pier, looking remarkably sad and forlorn. Jesus and I were still talking, but I remember watching the guy and feeling sort of sorry for him and distressed for him at the same time. (I got the impression this was the Apostle John of all people.) Both my eyes and Jesus' eyes followed the young man down the pier.
Jesus then interrupted our conversation by saying that he needed to go and talk to him. Then he put down whatever he was working with in his hands, followed John down the pier, and put his arm around his shoulders. I remember watching that and wondering whether I should feel put off because Jesus ditched me to go talk to someone else. Oddly, I didn't really feel ditched. I milled around the pier for a few minutes, not sure what I was going to do next, and then I woke up.
At first, I was rather puzzled by the dream. Why have a dream with Jesus in it, in which he didn't really say anything to me that was informative? Why get a chance to ask any question, but not have the question answered? I puzzled over it for a moment or two, but then I went off to do my daily morning routine of Morning Prayer plus hymn singing. The hymn I opened to, unplanned, happened to be: "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" by Frederick Faber. After I sang through especially verse 3, I knew exactly why I had dreamed the dream. The meaning of the dream was threefold: One, that Jesus is far more human than I believe him to be, two, that Jesus is far kinder than I believe him to be, and three, that Jesus "speaks my language".
The dream was meant to be corrective of the kind of "gnostic" or overly-spiritualized intuition I had about Jesus--that he was "god in a bod" (Apollinarian heresy)--God's mind in a human body. The Jesus I spoke to actually had to think about my questions and process them and respond to me in a human and therefore limited way. What I was really surprised about in the dream was how sharp and incisive Jesus' question was: the way he began to consider my question showed that he could more than keep up with me intellectually, and I've always been a little paranoid about the fact that the Jesus in the gospels doesn't seem to be a nerd, so how could he really relate to me. (More on that in another post.) I was being myself and Jesus seemed to be being himself when he asked a nerd question about my nerd question. Fascinating.
But the dream was also corrective in that I tend to think of God the Father and the Son as strict disciplinarians, partly because of my own upbringing. It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that the first thing Jesus would do with John was just give him a hug instead of, say, scolding him for acting like a baby. In the dream, I felt some degree of compassion for John, but I didn't expect Jesus to. I expected him to demand that John grow up and behave more sensibly. That Jesus is so naturally and casually compassionate and kind . . . that really hadn't been a part of my image of God.
The Jesus "speaking my language" bit now reminds me quite a bit of the Luke 5 text wherein Jesus goes fishing with Simon and basically says, "You think I don't know how fishing works? I know how fish work so well they just do what I want." When I read that text, I see Simon confronted with the fact that he's honored by this rabbi's interest in him, but he really doesn't know what Jesus has to do with his life. But then Jesus says through his actions, "I own this, I own fishing, I know how it all works, I know and have mastered your livelihood--so why don't you trust me, and moreover, why don't you just come follow me already?" In my dream, Jesus was telling me, "You know, I really get the life of the mind. I really have that down. You don't actually have to worry that I won't understand you or we'll run out of things to talk about or I won't be interested in you or your life. Actually, I own all this, and I made it all up and it's all beautiful and fascinating--so why don't you stop dithering and come, follow me?"
Anyway, that's the impression I get about the dream and one of the reasons I rather like dreams, and rather like when Jesus walks into one.
"For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord."
~Third stanza of Faber's "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy"
In the dream, I was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I remember looking at the row of ships on docks off to my left, and to my right was nothing much beside sand. At some point, I remember peering down onto the deck flooring of a ship that was curiously clear--I could see straight down into the water. That was a moment of fun outside of the dream and wonder within the dream. At some point--I had no sense of being in a hurry--I wandered up to where Jesus was. He was working on mending some nets and seemed also in no particular hurry.
If I was surprised to see him there, I wasn't very much surprised: it was the sort of surprise you have when you're not exactly expecting to see a friend to show up in a place where he or she might very well naturally show up, but you like your friend so much you are excited to see him or her anyway. So I was a little excited to see Jesus, but not crazy excited to see him as I would be if I turned around in my living room now and saw him standing there.
I knew very clearly in the dream that I could ask Jesus anything at all that I wanted to, although I had no particular sense of anxiety or nervousness about it. So, naturally, I asked him some wandering and convoluted question about how one should interpret some complicated problem of "authorial voice" in Scripture. My question had something to do with both epistemology and ontology and I think had some relevance to some modernist quibbling about the inspiration of Scripture. Honestly, I don't quite remember exactly what I asked, but since Jesus never quite got around to answering my question, I suppose that didn't matter too much. What did matter and what was remarkable and what was the lesson for me was how he responded to my question.
The first thing Jesus did was actually think about my question. He mulled over my question for a moment, asked me a clarifying question that went along the lines of, "So what you're really asking is x because of y and z?" In turn, I thought about it for a little while and rephrased my question with his question in mind. All the while, I noticed this sort of scrawny, mopey looking young man with quite the bush of thick brown hair sort of skulking around the edges of our conversation. At some point he wandered off down a pier, looking remarkably sad and forlorn. Jesus and I were still talking, but I remember watching the guy and feeling sort of sorry for him and distressed for him at the same time. (I got the impression this was the Apostle John of all people.) Both my eyes and Jesus' eyes followed the young man down the pier.
Jesus then interrupted our conversation by saying that he needed to go and talk to him. Then he put down whatever he was working with in his hands, followed John down the pier, and put his arm around his shoulders. I remember watching that and wondering whether I should feel put off because Jesus ditched me to go talk to someone else. Oddly, I didn't really feel ditched. I milled around the pier for a few minutes, not sure what I was going to do next, and then I woke up.
At first, I was rather puzzled by the dream. Why have a dream with Jesus in it, in which he didn't really say anything to me that was informative? Why get a chance to ask any question, but not have the question answered? I puzzled over it for a moment or two, but then I went off to do my daily morning routine of Morning Prayer plus hymn singing. The hymn I opened to, unplanned, happened to be: "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" by Frederick Faber. After I sang through especially verse 3, I knew exactly why I had dreamed the dream. The meaning of the dream was threefold: One, that Jesus is far more human than I believe him to be, two, that Jesus is far kinder than I believe him to be, and three, that Jesus "speaks my language".
The dream was meant to be corrective of the kind of "gnostic" or overly-spiritualized intuition I had about Jesus--that he was "god in a bod" (Apollinarian heresy)--God's mind in a human body. The Jesus I spoke to actually had to think about my questions and process them and respond to me in a human and therefore limited way. What I was really surprised about in the dream was how sharp and incisive Jesus' question was: the way he began to consider my question showed that he could more than keep up with me intellectually, and I've always been a little paranoid about the fact that the Jesus in the gospels doesn't seem to be a nerd, so how could he really relate to me. (More on that in another post.) I was being myself and Jesus seemed to be being himself when he asked a nerd question about my nerd question. Fascinating.
But the dream was also corrective in that I tend to think of God the Father and the Son as strict disciplinarians, partly because of my own upbringing. It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that the first thing Jesus would do with John was just give him a hug instead of, say, scolding him for acting like a baby. In the dream, I felt some degree of compassion for John, but I didn't expect Jesus to. I expected him to demand that John grow up and behave more sensibly. That Jesus is so naturally and casually compassionate and kind . . . that really hadn't been a part of my image of God.
The Jesus "speaking my language" bit now reminds me quite a bit of the Luke 5 text wherein Jesus goes fishing with Simon and basically says, "You think I don't know how fishing works? I know how fish work so well they just do what I want." When I read that text, I see Simon confronted with the fact that he's honored by this rabbi's interest in him, but he really doesn't know what Jesus has to do with his life. But then Jesus says through his actions, "I own this, I own fishing, I know how it all works, I know and have mastered your livelihood--so why don't you trust me, and moreover, why don't you just come follow me already?" In my dream, Jesus was telling me, "You know, I really get the life of the mind. I really have that down. You don't actually have to worry that I won't understand you or we'll run out of things to talk about or I won't be interested in you or your life. Actually, I own all this, and I made it all up and it's all beautiful and fascinating--so why don't you stop dithering and come, follow me?"
Anyway, that's the impression I get about the dream and one of the reasons I rather like dreams, and rather like when Jesus walks into one.
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord."
~Third stanza of Faber's "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy"
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Creative Writing and the Spirit of Celebration
I suppose that many writers write for many reasons and out of many motivations. I imagine one could spend a great deal of time cataloging those reasons, and could come up with a fantastic array of vices and virtues, healthy and abnormal psychological conditions. I used to wonder what sort of mood fed my times of most intense creative writing--especially the reams and reams of ink on works of fiction (each ream having 500 or so pages, quite literally). At some point in time, I called it "joy", but I think it is more verbal than that--I think I write fiction especially when I am in times of celebration, and find it difficult to write when I lose touch with that sense of celebration.
I originally entitled my blog "sublimation" because the bits of non-fiction writing I've been most happy with lately (because they've been the most creative) have been bits of sublimation: things I have written to process that have been caught up in something a little bit better than my confusing whirl of thought and emotion about them. In the past, my fiction creative writing has been much different--it has been an almost aggressive pursuit and delight in aspects of God's creation (all of it--physical, spiritual, personal), God's own self, and God's interaction with us. There's something about writing fiction and I think fantasy/science-fiction in particular that lets one really grasp creation--createdness--by two hands and shake it in joyous enthusiasm. Tolkien and Lewis had their conception of "sub-creation" by which an artist of some kind enters into the similar (analogously so) kind of work that God does in creation. In writing a story, I get to celebrate all of God's marvelous creativity by demonstrating the creation's awesome contingency: the fact that it could be, it has been, and it will be other than it is right now, and that is a good thing! No where else is God's generosity and plenitude on display than in the vastness of the cosmos . . . and the sci-fi/fantasy section at Barnes and Nobles! This is a part of God's own mind and character that we get to see and imitate whenever we do art, and especially when we imagine alternate worlds and histories and species and persons. Paradoxically, we illuminate what is and call to mind what could be by celebrating what is not.
Question 44 of the Summa Theologica is the first "question" that Thomas Aquinas puts to exploring the creation and it goes like this: "The procession of creatures from God, and of the first cause of all things." (As you can see, the question isn't exactly in question form . . . this probably isn't a case of allofunctional implicature, but I will bring it up anyway.) I love this "question" and especially the grand use of the term "procession" almost as much as I love Boethius' definition of eternity. Aquinas uses the term "procession" somewhat loosely. God has both internal processions and external processions. The internal ones are nothing less than the Personal processions of Son and Spirit and the external procession is the creation as a whole. Procession simply refers to God as source, but it gives such a richness to the imagery! When I think of the creation "processing" from God (though not from his being and substance, of course), I think of everything God has made marching before his throne in humble but joyous celebration of the goodness of God and the goodness of the gift of their own creation and existence. That, perhaps, is why celebration is the key to my creative writing. When I write, I celebrate the goodness of the created order and my own creation: I celebrate everything particular to that order, it's richness, its giftedness, its contingency, its fleetingness, the fact that it must begin and end.
Which is also why I'm not always in the mood to celebrate the createdness of the creation. Oftentimes, I am more frightened than joyous at the fact that neither creation nor myself are necessary beings. Oftentimes, I want to be a determinist because I want to be able to figure out all things before hand. Or, I want to be a panentheist and be merged with God such that I am just as necessary to exist as God. In short, I often either want to make an idol of myself or of the world in order to bring false comfort to myself that all is safe and sturdy and secure. Contingency and giftedness displace us from occupying a too central role even in our own estimation because it displaces us ontologically, at the very root of our existence and our being. But all false comfort is ultimately poison, and when I try to make myself too necessary (logically, ontologically, relationally) I end up making a burden for myself that I cannot possibly bear and web myself in with anxieties. When I really trust God enough to relinquish control to him and accept my existence and my life and my being as the contingent, unneccesary, but beloved gift that I am, I can start opening my heart and hands to embrace createdness and creation again. Otherwise, I close my heart and resent everything I don't know and don't understand. I would rather have the spirit of adventure, but the spirit is willing while the flesh is weak.
There's something that happens in the transition from childhood to adulthood that makes most of us have to learn how to accept again. (In many childhoods, anyway.) Both my childhood and adolescence were fairly undisturbed and thus free to be filled with wonder. But when I ran off to college I found myself confronted with crises after crises of different sorts (some personal, some epistemological, some in matters of faith) that made trusting God and myself and the basic goodness of the world quite a bit more of a challenge! I imagine some people never experience basic trust of the world in that way, and some people never have that trust shaken. But I wonder whether the majority of people have a hiccup or two at the beginning or end of adolescence and have to learn again what it means to be a child. I also imagine that many of us spend a great deal of time flubbing this lesson and having to be taken through it again and again until we really learn how to be led to Jesus like little children.
There's something childlike about joy and celebration--which makes it harder for those of us who feel the need to be sober-minded adults much of the time. I don't have anything against genuine adulthood--in fact, praise Jesus if you actually manage to become a self-respecting, contributing adult. But not if it makes you boring and self-protective and think you are the one who must be in control and in charge of your life. That pose sometimes makes me feel more secure or more adult, but it also makes me curl up in on myself and have less to give and less to celebrate.
Art is one of the closest things we have to pure gift on this side of the veil. Ultimately we engage in art for the sake of beauty and not for the sake of utility. We know that beauty makes life better, but only because it appears that human beings are made for beauty, not because of any "practical" gain or reason. The thing that refreshes us about the imagination-in-act is that it awakens us to our true nature--to our true identity as beings given an identity for no other reason that we were thought by One to be lovely, to be worthy, to be gift. In life we are receivers before we are ever givers, and what we receive is as deep as our own bodies, souls, and minds.
I originally entitled my blog "sublimation" because the bits of non-fiction writing I've been most happy with lately (because they've been the most creative) have been bits of sublimation: things I have written to process that have been caught up in something a little bit better than my confusing whirl of thought and emotion about them. In the past, my fiction creative writing has been much different--it has been an almost aggressive pursuit and delight in aspects of God's creation (all of it--physical, spiritual, personal), God's own self, and God's interaction with us. There's something about writing fiction and I think fantasy/science-fiction in particular that lets one really grasp creation--createdness--by two hands and shake it in joyous enthusiasm. Tolkien and Lewis had their conception of "sub-creation" by which an artist of some kind enters into the similar (analogously so) kind of work that God does in creation. In writing a story, I get to celebrate all of God's marvelous creativity by demonstrating the creation's awesome contingency: the fact that it could be, it has been, and it will be other than it is right now, and that is a good thing! No where else is God's generosity and plenitude on display than in the vastness of the cosmos . . . and the sci-fi/fantasy section at Barnes and Nobles! This is a part of God's own mind and character that we get to see and imitate whenever we do art, and especially when we imagine alternate worlds and histories and species and persons. Paradoxically, we illuminate what is and call to mind what could be by celebrating what is not.
Question 44 of the Summa Theologica is the first "question" that Thomas Aquinas puts to exploring the creation and it goes like this: "The procession of creatures from God, and of the first cause of all things." (As you can see, the question isn't exactly in question form . . . this probably isn't a case of allofunctional implicature, but I will bring it up anyway.) I love this "question" and especially the grand use of the term "procession" almost as much as I love Boethius' definition of eternity. Aquinas uses the term "procession" somewhat loosely. God has both internal processions and external processions. The internal ones are nothing less than the Personal processions of Son and Spirit and the external procession is the creation as a whole. Procession simply refers to God as source, but it gives such a richness to the imagery! When I think of the creation "processing" from God (though not from his being and substance, of course), I think of everything God has made marching before his throne in humble but joyous celebration of the goodness of God and the goodness of the gift of their own creation and existence. That, perhaps, is why celebration is the key to my creative writing. When I write, I celebrate the goodness of the created order and my own creation: I celebrate everything particular to that order, it's richness, its giftedness, its contingency, its fleetingness, the fact that it must begin and end.
Which is also why I'm not always in the mood to celebrate the createdness of the creation. Oftentimes, I am more frightened than joyous at the fact that neither creation nor myself are necessary beings. Oftentimes, I want to be a determinist because I want to be able to figure out all things before hand. Or, I want to be a panentheist and be merged with God such that I am just as necessary to exist as God. In short, I often either want to make an idol of myself or of the world in order to bring false comfort to myself that all is safe and sturdy and secure. Contingency and giftedness displace us from occupying a too central role even in our own estimation because it displaces us ontologically, at the very root of our existence and our being. But all false comfort is ultimately poison, and when I try to make myself too necessary (logically, ontologically, relationally) I end up making a burden for myself that I cannot possibly bear and web myself in with anxieties. When I really trust God enough to relinquish control to him and accept my existence and my life and my being as the contingent, unneccesary, but beloved gift that I am, I can start opening my heart and hands to embrace createdness and creation again. Otherwise, I close my heart and resent everything I don't know and don't understand. I would rather have the spirit of adventure, but the spirit is willing while the flesh is weak.
There's something that happens in the transition from childhood to adulthood that makes most of us have to learn how to accept again. (In many childhoods, anyway.) Both my childhood and adolescence were fairly undisturbed and thus free to be filled with wonder. But when I ran off to college I found myself confronted with crises after crises of different sorts (some personal, some epistemological, some in matters of faith) that made trusting God and myself and the basic goodness of the world quite a bit more of a challenge! I imagine some people never experience basic trust of the world in that way, and some people never have that trust shaken. But I wonder whether the majority of people have a hiccup or two at the beginning or end of adolescence and have to learn again what it means to be a child. I also imagine that many of us spend a great deal of time flubbing this lesson and having to be taken through it again and again until we really learn how to be led to Jesus like little children.
There's something childlike about joy and celebration--which makes it harder for those of us who feel the need to be sober-minded adults much of the time. I don't have anything against genuine adulthood--in fact, praise Jesus if you actually manage to become a self-respecting, contributing adult. But not if it makes you boring and self-protective and think you are the one who must be in control and in charge of your life. That pose sometimes makes me feel more secure or more adult, but it also makes me curl up in on myself and have less to give and less to celebrate.
Art is one of the closest things we have to pure gift on this side of the veil. Ultimately we engage in art for the sake of beauty and not for the sake of utility. We know that beauty makes life better, but only because it appears that human beings are made for beauty, not because of any "practical" gain or reason. The thing that refreshes us about the imagination-in-act is that it awakens us to our true nature--to our true identity as beings given an identity for no other reason that we were thought by One to be lovely, to be worthy, to be gift. In life we are receivers before we are ever givers, and what we receive is as deep as our own bodies, souls, and minds.
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