Out of the mouth of babes…and ancient philosophers.

“At that very moment he rejoiced [in] the holy Spirit and said, ‘I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.'” –Luke 10:21

“I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing…” -Socrates (Apology)

Scumbag Socrates

A Sunday School student recently inquired about the above referenced Scripture passage: Why is being childlike better than being wise and learned? Wasn’t Solomon really wise? Reflecting on these questions has proven to be enlightening. And, no, the irony is not lost on me that they were in fact proposed by a child.

There have no doubt been great peaks in human history with regards to wisdom and learning. Having the benefit of building upon previous advances and discoveries, we can anticipate even greater examples of human genius to come. And with each successive development we can be certain that humanity will proportionately grow more and more confident in its own understanding.

This confidence in our own understanding is itself rarely, if ever, examined, though. And herein lies true “wisdom” as exemplified in Socrates. This is not to discount or discourage our pursuits of knowledge, but we must do so with the acknowledgement that our understanding by nature will necessarily be inadequate and limited.

True wisdom recognizes this ultimate limitation of our comprehension. It’s understandably disconcerting to question the confidence we have in our own understanding. Yet, this recognition most lucidly highlights the role that faith plays in our lives. Having faith isn’t about not thinking; on the contrary, faith is the natural, often intuitive, response to thinking maximalized. The question becomes: Where does our understanding properly concede to faith? In other words, to what (or whom) do we give our faith?

The wisdom of Solomon…which, coincidentally, may entail advocating children be chopped in half.

Christianity has the advantage of having unmitigated divine revelation through the person Jesus Christ. Because of this extraordinary revelation, our realm of understanding was greatly expanded, more so than we could ever accomplish on our own. Anybody who has ever studied the logical and elaborate depths of St. Thomas Aquinas’ writings could easily recognize this. But even St. Thomas, after being granted an experience of mystical grace, came to recognize that all of his great and encompassing work was mere “straw” when compared to ultimate reality. Even the aforementioned Solomon in all of his wisdom cautioned that we should trust not in our own understanding.

Children, in contrast to the self-confidence of the “wise and learned,” are by necessity imbued with an intellectual humility and this is the stance we must try to maintain as advocated by our Lord. A regretful and unfortunate example of the egoism of human understanding is evident in the conflicted fragmentation of much of Christianity, particularly following the Protestant Reformation. With the emphasis on personalism, how could it not be so? The Protestant Christian is essentially left to his own devices (or that of a preferred pastor) with the unsurprising result of denominationalism or the reduction to the ambiguousness of “non-denominationalism.”

I guess not everything can be ambiguous.

Are we really to believe that Jesus Christ came to establish Christianity only to leave us to fall back again on our own limited understanding? In keeping with the intention to maintain childlikeness, we of course admit to having a father, a heavenly Father in fact, but the analogy is not complete without a mother. It is no coincidence that Catholic Christians refer to the Church as Mother, and rightly so, for she was endowed with the authority of Christ. With our Father’s revelation and our Mother’s guidance we are not left to solely lean on our own limited understanding. We can therefore humbly recognize our true purpose and trustingly respond as true children of God.

Bill Maher and the Vanity of Science

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

–Blaise Pascal

In a recent interview, Stephen Colbert made a somewhat bold attempt to evangelize the vehemently atheistic Bill Maher. In doing so, Colbert utilized Pascal’s Wager about the reasonable potential benefit of a general belief in God. While it was an admirable attempt on Colbert behalf, it unsurprisingly fell on deaf ears with Maher. Regardless, it did strike me, considering Maher’s scientific dismissal of religious belief, that Colbert brought up Blaise Pascal in defense of religious belief. In my opinion Maher would actually do well to really engage with Pascal and his pensées, or “thoughts.”

Colbert: “Take Pascal’s Wager: If you’re wrong, you’re an idiot; but if I’m right…then you’re going to Hell.”

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was one of humanity’s greatest minds especially considering his short life having died at the age of 39. He made discoveries and advances in such fields as mathmatics, physics, engineering, and probability, some of which are still in use today. More to the point of this post, he was also passionately religious and even started to pen a comprehensive defense of the Christian Faith against the growing contemporary movement known as Skepticism. Even though he was never able to complete such an ambitious work, we are lucky enough to have available to us the hundreds of fragments and thoughts that were to be developed into this monumental text of Christian apologetics which is now available to us as his Pensées. Considering Colbert’s approach, though he may not have actually realized it at the time, the appeal to Pascal is coincidentally a very appropriate guide when dealing with the likes of Maher.

To the modern mind it may seem odd to hear about such a religiously minded scientist, but the supposed dichotomy between science and religion seems in fact to be only a very recent development that is by no means absolute. With that in mind I think that it is helpful to take a look at the brilliance of someone like Pascal to get a better understanding about how we should properly balance scientific knowledge and matters of faith.

For Maher, as is evident in the video, scientific knowledge seems to be the epitome of human achievement and this provides for him the ultimate method for overcoming the need to have faith. Accordingly, the only reason why ancient civilizations developed wild systems of beliefs was because they just lacked the advantage of modern science. Maher therefore finds it difficult to even associate with the religious beliefs of a people who didn’t even “know what a germ or an atom was” or “where the sun went at night.”

An icon proving that the Sun and Moon are in fact just disembodied heads that Jesus juggles across the sky.

Of course, scientific knowledge is useful and should be rightly pursued to that extent, but what Pascal so critically recognized was that the physical sciences were not without its limitations. To the point, science is the study of the temporal material world – temporal not only in the sense that the world is in the continual state of change and decay, but more importantly in the sense that we ourselves are, too! To devote yourself only to the study of the temporal world is a diversion from the ultimate questions. And herein lies the “vanity” of science according to Pascal.

Science is destined to be nothing more than superficial, because it is only concerned with observations and appearances. Of course, this has its usefulness, but it also understandably has its limits. What does it profit a man to fully understand the germ, it’s existence and it’s nature, when man is going to die one day regardless of said knowledge? Of what benefit is it to be able to expound on the intricacies of the submolecular world of atoms when we are wasting away on our deathbeds? What consolation is it to know that we are temporarily in the absence of the sun on a regular basis due to the earth’s rotation and orbit when we are in constant danger of being permanently absent from the sun through death?

All of this really boils down to the ultimate limitation of science: that all it can ever do is tell us how the world is, but not why. And this is the consolation that Pascal alludes to in the above quote: that we really need a sense of purpose in order to proceed in the world, making sense of our afflictions, in particular the ultimate affliction of our mortality. The physical sciences by its own methodological approach can never supply that. In fact, it can be a distraction from the ultimate, eternal questions, just like any form of temporal attention grabbing can be, such as sports, entertainment and the likes.

St. Bruno demonstrating that saints are not afraid to look death in the face without distraction.

The reason why ancient answers to ultimate questions can still be relevant today is because they are in reference to the eternal. Science, being bound to matters of the temporal world, are subject to scientific developments introducing us to newer theories that themselves have no guarantee of not being eventually replaced. Given this consideration, we can easily recognize that due to future advances in science even Maher’s current scientific views will likely one day seem just as ridiculous as the ancients do to him now. And what does that say about his own beliefs, or lack thereof, about the eternal questions of God’s existence and man’s purpose(lessness)?

Recognizing these natural limitations in our knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is key to understanding our need for faith. For even Bill Maher has to have some assentation to faith because he can’t possibly know, understand and control all things at all times. It’s just a natural response to the limitations of our human condition. With regards to the eternal questions, we must, in the true spirit of scientific inquiry, resist the temptation to distract ourselves from the reality of our mortality and pursue eternal truths, discovering the purpose for our limited, temporal existence.

We would do well, and Pascal would agree, to begin with the eternal Divine Person who broke into the temporal world as an historical event with which we should, no, we must all consciously confront and respond to accordingly – He who came to show us our true selves.

Perhaps there’s more to life than sound and color…

Fanning the Flames of Discontention

“Just as that which has fire but is not itself fire (by its essence) is on fire by participation (in fire), so that which has existence but is not existence is a being by participation.”

-St. Thomas Aquinas

“What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.”

-Jean-Paul Sartre

One general characteristic of the human condition is the experience of free will (unless you believe in hard determinism, in which case I’m necessarily predetermined to believe in free will, so…). I can’t imagine the average person denying this experience, even if they choose not to use their free will in certain situations. This experience is enough to help us see how unique humanity is from other known sentient beings.

Of course, we have natural urges and drives similar to those found all over the animal kingdom. The thing is that, under normal circumstances, we are also completely capable of denying ourselves these normal compulsions. A dog who willingly denies himself food we would likely consider to be sick. Yet, we can easily imagine a person denying themselves food for health reasons (e.g. dieting), political reasons (e.g. to protest) or even spiritual reasons (e.g. fasting) with understanding and possible admiration.

Gandhi on a hunger strike…y’know, just being human.

This state of affairs causes a sort of disconnect regarding the nature of being human. Normally, a being’s essence (what they are) determines their existence (how they are) in that we can clearly recognize dog-yness and confidently expect dogs to follow suit.

Humanity on the other hand seems to be in the precarious situation of having existence prior to any determined essence. This understanding was articulated in the philosophical Existentialism movement (see Sartre quote above). In our freedom of the will, how we are (i.e. what we decide to do in our ongoing decisiveness) is how we determine what we are and express what we believe our purpose is.

The isolation of self-alienation is just awkward.

When drawn to its logical conclusion, the implications of the abuse of free will through the sole practice of self determination is actually quite dismaying. We can already see the widespread practice of relativising personal identity and how it can only lead to a culture of self-alienation – nobody can truly understand what it’s like to be me and, therefore, we are all unrelateable. We become a society, or rather a collection, of isolated individuals.

If this is a true assessment of the human condition, how could it end up any other way? How can we speak of abusing free will unless there were a purpose for our free will other than arbitrary self-determination?

I have written elsewhere about the true practice of love being a matter of the will. That is to say, in order to truly love, it must be a freely willed act. Now, Christian tradition has clearly revealed that God is love and that humanity is made in His image and likeness. Recognizing this fact about ourselves we begin to see a resolution to the tension of this supposed inversion of the natural order: that we have existence before we have an essence contrary to the rest of nature.

This Christian anthropology recognizes that our true essence is to love which necessitates the capacity for free will and consequently the ability to go against this essence in our existence. In other words, because love involves a free choice, we are also capable of choosing to not love. With the contemporary abuse of free will to go against our true essence, you can almost imagine the origin of our species, our original parents, doing likewise and on down through the ages, generation after generation having lost sight of our true calling: to love.

A God who is love and who created us toward that end would no doubt not allow us to continue to wallow in such a state. Out of pure love, He would come and show humanity its purpose, show it by example so that we may experience it and in turn participate in it. Could it really be so? Would not love be the catholicon to widespread alienation and isolation?

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
– Jesus Christ (Luke 12:49)

God’s love can in a certain sense be understood as like a divine fire. When we come into our true Spirit, we would no doubt become enflamed by fiery tongues of love. And if that is our true calling, our essence, would that we all be on fire by participation.

A Gracious Perspective

“What is incomprehensible is that nothing, and yet everything, has changed, after all… ‘Nothing has changed’ means: Although I have no right to change my report about what I saw, since I see the same things now as before – still, I am incomprehensibly compelled to report completely different things, one after the other.”

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology

The Jastrow Rabbit-Duck Illusion…or is it Duck-Rabbit?

It can be understandably tempting to draw the conclusion from the problem of evil that God does not exist. Rather than solving the proposed problem, this conclusion seems to compound the issue even further: for not only is there perceived evil, but it can only be at it’s source only incidental and meaningless!

While it’s evident that being a god-fearing individual does not preserve you from the experience of evil, I think that it is the proper context for reckoning evil, though this perspective is not always grasped even by the faithful.

Consider St. Paul’s admonition to give thanks in all circumstances. We know that St. Paul’s life did not lack in its difficulties. How is it that he could possibly recommend that we give thanks in all circumstances?

We can easily focus on this difficult aspect of all-encompassing thankfulness and abandon this project even before we begin. Rather, we would do well to approach it reasonably and begin by at least being thankful for the small, ordinary things in life. As the incomparable G.K. Chesterton once admitted:

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

G. K. Chesterton being thankful, no doubt.

Adamantly saying grace (i.e. giving thanks) will no doubt lead you to begin to recognize everything as a gift. The thing about gifts, it’s helpful to remember, is that they aren’t earned – they are by definition freely and unconditionally given. Acknowledging this implication should naturally begin to temper any undue sense of entitlement and any of its resultant unfulfilled frustrations.

We must ask ourselves: Can we truly accept gifts? Honestly, how many of us would accept an unwarranted gift without suspicion, even by someone who we know, without a doubt, loves us? Is this jadedness preventing us from truly being thankful?

Regardless of our perception, everything is nothing less than total gift; that is to say, everything is grace. And because this is so, we can confidently conclude that there are no gifts without a giver. We will come to find that the consequence of recognizing this simple fact is pure joy, not unlike the joy young children experience when they receive gifts.

The gif(t) of pure joy.

Of course, we will likely discover that, with this movement of gratitude, being primarily dispositional, ultimately nothing about our day to day experience changes…and yet everything has changed.

Three Wire songs in a row? You’re welcome.

Like a Heartbeat

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of…”

Blaise Pascal. A picture of his heart wasn’t available for some unknown reason.

…as Blaise Pascal once concluded. He also observed that “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” He seems to have been exceptionally perceptive of the human condition and I can appreciate the truth in such observations. There’s something about the peace and receptivity that you experience when sitting quietly for any extended amount of time, recollecting yourself, disassociating yourself from the noise of the world.

This is all the more true when sitting in the quiet, humble divine presence during Eucharistic Adoration. Those who have been in a intimate relationship probably know that wordlessly enjoying each others presence can be just as satisfying as any other communication. This experience is certainly the case with the presence of the Eucharist, if not more so. Words fail and even a mere glance will wholly satisfy.

At one time, I had made a regular habit of arriving to Church an hour and a half early in order to rest in His peace in adoration. The chapel had become for me like a monastery away from the monastery. On Saturday afternoons before Vigil Mass, the adoration chapel was rarely occupied and I would find myself alone, able to spend some quality time with “my Lord and my God.” Needless to say, it was always a fruitful experience, but, for the purposes of this post, I want to focus on one memorable meditation in particular.

On this specific occasion, I was occupied by His loving presence when, amongst the gentle silence of the chapel, I became keenly aware of my own heartbeat. I proceeded to plumb the depths of the heart’s mystery: it’s seemingly unconscious, consistent activity – the immediate, physical source of my life. In it we can recognize an intimate confirmation of God’s hand in our existence. Why does it beat so? What is the source of it’s persistent busyness for our benefit? Our dependence on it is at once awe-ful and humbling, yet gratifying.

With this in mind, it’s easy to see why this organ is attributed as the source of love. Who among us hasn’t experienced the heart’s flutter in the presence of someone whom we love deeply? It is a physical and symbolic affirmation of God’s loving occupation with our being here, being alive. Dare I call it sacramental? Here we find the epicenter of the paradoxical nature of man: recognizable as the point where body and soul most acutely converge; where the temporal and the infinite meet in our being.

It has been understood that God is best related to in love (rather than by intellect or imagination) and so it has happened that as I have progressed in my prayer life, I have more and more recognized the need to move from my head to my heart. This recognition was all the more confirmed as I meditated on my heartbeat that one peaceful afternoon.

When I had disclosed this “revelation” to my spiritual director at the time, he was able to further connect the constancy of the heartbeat to the unrelenting pursuit of you by God as related in that haunting poem by Francis Thompson “The Hound of Heaven.” He never stops pursuing your love… Just take a moment to sit quietly, listen to your heart, and comprehend this fact. Then bask in the wonder of His enlivening love.

The Will To Love

I have been considering how I should begin this blog, especially with regards to how I want to set the tone for my future posts. As expressed in the subtitle of this blog, I intend to produce posts that represent the reciprocated love that I have for God. Perhaps I should begin by clarifying what I think that it means to love, particularly in relation to a God who is Love.

“God is love…“

–1 John 4:8

What an endearing expression. No doubt most of us have nothing but positive impressions when it comes to our own concept of “love.” And this only makes it easier to accept the idea of, or at least hope for, a god who is love. But what is this feeling called love?

You’d think, based on the countless pop music hits throughout the recent decades, that we have a firm grip on what love is exactly. It’s all warm feelings and happiness and best expressed in song, right?

The God of Love as revealed to us through the Scriptures and His Church shows us a more dynamic and complete view of love than what is passed as “love” in popular culture today. Sure, love can often be associated with the positive feelings as noted above, but it seems self-defeating to reduce it to such a sentimental understanding.

Does your love look like this?

It might be best to say that Love as expounded in the Bible, the love associated with the God Who is Love, is sacrificial. And if the idea of sacrifice doesn’t provoke warm feelings and happiness for you, stay with me because it is my observation that this aspect of authentic love is part of it’s paradoxical nature. And if it’s one point that I want to get across in these posts, it’s the satisfaction that accompanies the embrace of paradoxes.

Love is paradoxical in that it is at once both:

an emotional reaction

and

an act of the will

The emotional, or affective, side of love has already been alluded to in this post. It’s the immediate experience that we have with love and it’s most likely what people will think of when they think of love. But, to reduce love to it’s emotional aspect is troublesome and will inevitably be unfulfilling.

Emotions and feelings are fleeting, based on certain stimuli and situations that cannot be eternally sustained in a world of change, a world that is largely out of our control. This is not to mention that we ourselves naturally tire of continuous exposure to what we claim to love. Imagine listening to nothing except for your current favorite pop love song over and over again – for the rest of your life!

There is usually not a pure and simple emotion that we experience called “love.” What we perceive as love will most likely be tainted by any number of other feelings that we may have, including, but not limited to, lust or a desire to feel perceived as beautiful or a fear of loneliness: In short, emotional “love” is often colored and distorted by other emotions and, perhaps unconsciously, some form of personal selfishness, otherwise known as concupiscence.

On the other hand, there is within our capacity the ability to directly will love. If this were not the case, then Jesus’ admonition to love our enemies, for example, would be absurd. Though emotional love shouldn’t be dismissed, I think that it should be supplemented by the will-to-love. Put in practice, these two aspects will surely reinforce each other, in a kind of dialectical maturation.

This train gets it.

Upon reflection, this will-to-love is clearly superior to emotional love, particularly with respect to what we usually want the most out of love. For one thing, the willful act of consciously deciding to love someone is a powerful undertaking. “I choose to love you.” In this sense, the will-to-love is active whereas emotional love can only be reactive.

From there we can recognize that the will-to-love is the properly understood source of unconditional love. If you will to love someone, you would in most cases have to do so in the face of any number of personally ‘un-loveable’ or disagreeable characteristics. Emotional love is always dependent, that is to say conditional, on our reaction to the other at any particular moment. And, as determined above, this prospect is not sustainable in a world of change, growth and decay. The will-to-love has the dynamism to persevere in spite of such instability.

The exercise of the will-to-love is properly affirmed and reaffirmed in our every conscious moment. I choose you continuously. This is the obvious and appropriate approach to the mutual contract of marriage professed as ’till death do we part.’

The genuine practice of a will-to-love will necessarily involve some level of self-denial, hence the aforementioned love as sacrificial. We choose to love in the face of any attributes that are contrary to our preferences. It should be understood that this love that is willed is toward the good of the other. This is not to be confused with a project of indulging the other’s every selfish desire. Ideally, the sacrifice is mutual, a complete self gift of one to the other and vice versa.

The God Who is Love, who is almost thoughtlessly lauded by most sensible people these days, is the supreme example of this will-to-love. He died for our sake even while we were sinners, that is to say living actively in opposition to Him. He loves unconditionally on an absolute level. He consciously chooses you as is evidenced in your very existence. He actively wills your good, which is not the fulfillment of your selfish desires. He selflessly empties Himself that we may participate in and perfect His Will-to-Love in the world.

It is no coincidence that He proposes that you return this will-to-love to Him as a Bridegroom who is asking for your hand in an eternal marriage. Yes, He is calling you to the wedding feast of the Lamb. He doesn’t unjustly impel you to love Him. It is evident that He desires that higher form of unconditional love from you. Choose Him. Will to love Him Who is Love.

Obligatory pop love song.