I'm sure my frustrated, venting prayers look so ridiculous while I'm praying them--especially walking the streets of New York--knowing any person watching thinks I'm talking to myself. Outloud.
Have you ever prayed a prayer something to the effect of this:
"God please take this distraction away. Really, it's bugging me. And I want to obey you, but how can I obey you when I don't know what you're saying? And I want to worship you first, but (long sigh), I just love concrete things more than abstract things. And right now, Jesus seems abstract. So here's my list for tonight: I need this distraction gone, and I need to know that you are real. Help me be okay with the reality of hell, and please show me if I'm really supposed to do music...(longer more exasperated sigh) see, now I'm praying too many things--there's no way I'm going to remember which answers I'm waiting for. Especially with three papers due tomorrow, which, shoot, I haven't started. Yeah, by the way, please help me with those..."
Something inside of me shrinks when I hear people use the phrase, "the power of prayer." Partly because it sounds cliche. Don't get me wrong--I think prayer has great benefits. It makes me verbalize what it is I really desire. It concentrates my will toward those things. In group prayer, it could even concentrate the group on a unified goal. All good things. But there is still this gnawing feeling that I don't really believe prayer invites anything divine into the human side of things.
Why do I think this way?
Simple: I never pray.
But tonight shockingly reminded me that the "power of prayer" lies in God's ability to facilitate in hours what would have taken me months.
First, a phone call from my mom turned my heart away from the distraction. Then, in the back corner of a dimly lit coffee shop, tears welled and wouldn't stop falling from my eyes. Francis Shaeffar's book The God Who is There renewed my faith in a God who does exist, even though the inconsistencies in modern philosophy makes it really hard to believe in him.
The idea that faith and rationality are mutually-exclusive is one that we still haven’t recovered from today. Today, the former is seen as a product of optimistic, “wishful thinking”, and the latter as more of a pessimistic, accurate perspective. This precept is not even true, and yet it keeps thousands of rational people from committing to a belief in Jesus. As a result, most people have developed an understanding of the world that is fragmented, void of an overarching narrative, and meaningless. Schaeffar says, “When we speak of being under the line of despair, we do not mean that these people necessarily sit down and weep, but that they have given up all hope of achieving a rational unified answer to knowledge and life (23).
So the distraction removed, my faith in God renewed, and all of it happened in a way that replaced my worry about hell with a desire to bring people freedom, in this life and the one to come. And to top it off, a few days later, the music stuff was confirmed.
Ha, all that being said, I think I'm going to pray more.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Elegy
Elegy
Dylan Thomas
"Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cool kind man brave in his narrow pride."
Dylan Thomas
"Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cool kind man brave in his narrow pride."
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Dream.
I woke up at 5:30 and immediately started tracing the chronology of events in my dream. I knew this one was different. I didn't want it to escape me.
I distinctly remember being frustrated about what I wanted to "do with my life." Dr. Jackson was talking me through it.
"Write down all the things you're interested in doing," he said.
"See that's the thing" I moped back, writing just about every artistic interest I've ever had, "Whenever I think about the gravity of the human condition, I just want people to meet with God. Developing these skills seems really trivial..."
On the top left corner of the scribbled list with words, scribbled-out words, and circled words was the phrase "meet with God."
He circled it in bold and pointed emphatically, as if about to prove a point, "Just focus on this one. Just focus on this one"
He started to blur, I was making excuses until I stopped.
It sort of made sense.
But things in dreams always make a different kind of sense than waking life.
I distinctly remember being frustrated about what I wanted to "do with my life." Dr. Jackson was talking me through it.
"Write down all the things you're interested in doing," he said.
"See that's the thing" I moped back, writing just about every artistic interest I've ever had, "Whenever I think about the gravity of the human condition, I just want people to meet with God. Developing these skills seems really trivial..."
On the top left corner of the scribbled list with words, scribbled-out words, and circled words was the phrase "meet with God."
He circled it in bold and pointed emphatically, as if about to prove a point, "Just focus on this one. Just focus on this one"
He started to blur, I was making excuses until I stopped.
It sort of made sense.
But things in dreams always make a different kind of sense than waking life.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Science and Religion See the Deep Order of the World
"Yet the rational transparency and rational beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents. Belief in God can make all this intelligible, for it sees the deep order of the world - a world shot through with signs of mind, one might say - as being indeed a reflection of the truth that the Mind of the Creator is revealed in this way."
"The Creator has not filled creation with items stamped ‘made by God’. God’s existence is not self-evident in some totally unambiguous and undeniable way. The presence of God is veiled because, when you think about it, the naked presence of divinity would overwhelm finite creatures, depriving them of the possibility of truly being themselves and freely accepting God. It will be a recurring theme in this book, that, out of love, God has self-limited the exercise of divine power to give creatures the space to be themselves."
http://www.questionsoftruth.org/can-gods-existence-be-proved/
"The Creator has not filled creation with items stamped ‘made by God’. God’s existence is not self-evident in some totally unambiguous and undeniable way. The presence of God is veiled because, when you think about it, the naked presence of divinity would overwhelm finite creatures, depriving them of the possibility of truly being themselves and freely accepting God. It will be a recurring theme in this book, that, out of love, God has self-limited the exercise of divine power to give creatures the space to be themselves."
http://www.questionsoftruth.org/can-gods-existence-be-proved/
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The ache.
The ache
is to have
experienced you
and forced myself
to silence the thought of you.
The sadness
is to know
your nearness
is so distant
that while you live,
I live without you.
is to have
experienced you
and forced myself
to silence the thought of you.
The sadness
is to know
your nearness
is so distant
that while you live,
I live without you.
The arts as a means of redemption
Jane Addams (1909) was concerned for the youth of her generation who loved the illicit pleasures that lowered the quality of living. But she didn't blame them. Their love of play was just misplaced. Because when the arts become absent in society, vice is what we turn to...
It was society that "cared more for the products they manufacture than for their immemorial ability to reaffirm the charm of existence” (1003). Boys and girls were worked to death in a city void of artistic atmosphere and high culture.
She advocated a connection between music and morals, saying that it would "fit to this gross and heavy stuff the wings of the mind, to scatter from it the clinging mud of banality and vulgarity, and to speed it on through our city streets amid spontaneous laughter..."
"It would thus bring charm and beauty to the prosaic city and connect it subtly with the arts of the past as well as with the vigor and renwed life of the future" (1007 APT)
It was society that "cared more for the products they manufacture than for their immemorial ability to reaffirm the charm of existence” (1003). Boys and girls were worked to death in a city void of artistic atmosphere and high culture.
She advocated a connection between music and morals, saying that it would "fit to this gross and heavy stuff the wings of the mind, to scatter from it the clinging mud of banality and vulgarity, and to speed it on through our city streets amid spontaneous laughter..."
"It would thus bring charm and beauty to the prosaic city and connect it subtly with the arts of the past as well as with the vigor and renwed life of the future" (1007 APT)
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Weltschmerz.
I watched person after person pass by through the large Starbucks window. My heart hurt and my eyes began to water. Taking time to think about how many people go through life completely lost is a painful recognition of reality. How could Christianity be the hope of world when it seems like it's only the hope for a minority group? How could that possibly be good news?
This guy must have seen me crying, but he came up to me regardless and asked if the seat across from me was taken. I wasn't feeling anything close to light--or chatty, for that matter--but I listened to his happy description of New York sightseeing adventures and the like. A few seconds of silence followed...so I thought I'd be real.
"I'm actually a little sad right now."
"I can see that," he answered.
My mouth curved sardonically, "You must have seen my crying."
"Yeah, what was that all about?" (his German accent made the depressing subject seem almost adorable).
Since he was German, I figured I would explain how I was feeling in a word only the German language expresses so accurately: Weltschmerz. By definition, it means an overall weariness and sadness at the collective absence of hope in the human condition. My Weltschmertz seemed a foreign concept to him, but he said he was also a Christian. Not only that but some sort of youth minister back in Germany.
Which is why I was confused at his self admitted statements that were in COMPLETE contradiction with his belief system.
1. He said truth was different for each person.
2. He couldn't answer the question, "Who is Jesus?"
3. He doesn't believe it's necessary to read the Bible.
Now, I'm not saying my newfound German friend is not saved, does not love God, (etc) because I don't think salvation depends on a verbal formation of the correct "theological ideas." But that doesn't negate how powerful and important those ideas are. How important it is to know who Jesus was and is. How critical to think it is necessary to read the Bible, because the Bible gives a description of the world that is different than what most people will tell you. The truth in it allows you to suck the marrow out of life and love people in ways you thought weren't possible.
So his self-admittance to being a Christian, but apparent inconsistency with a real Christian understanding of things depressed me. Not just because of him, but because I know that the majority of people would agree with his three statements above.
And they miss out on the unimaginable freedom truth brings.
After we talked for awhile my German friend opened up about how he had just broken up with his girlfriend of a year and a half. I noticed him shaking. Somewhat. And I hurt for him. I knew he needed Jesus in a very real sense, but I also knew he probably wasn't confident enough in the reality of His existence to look to him.
This guy must have seen me crying, but he came up to me regardless and asked if the seat across from me was taken. I wasn't feeling anything close to light--or chatty, for that matter--but I listened to his happy description of New York sightseeing adventures and the like. A few seconds of silence followed...so I thought I'd be real.
"I'm actually a little sad right now."
"I can see that," he answered.
My mouth curved sardonically, "You must have seen my crying."
"Yeah, what was that all about?" (his German accent made the depressing subject seem almost adorable).
Since he was German, I figured I would explain how I was feeling in a word only the German language expresses so accurately: Weltschmerz. By definition, it means an overall weariness and sadness at the collective absence of hope in the human condition. My Weltschmertz seemed a foreign concept to him, but he said he was also a Christian. Not only that but some sort of youth minister back in Germany.
Which is why I was confused at his self admitted statements that were in COMPLETE contradiction with his belief system.
1. He said truth was different for each person.
2. He couldn't answer the question, "Who is Jesus?"
3. He doesn't believe it's necessary to read the Bible.
Now, I'm not saying my newfound German friend is not saved, does not love God, (etc) because I don't think salvation depends on a verbal formation of the correct "theological ideas." But that doesn't negate how powerful and important those ideas are. How important it is to know who Jesus was and is. How critical to think it is necessary to read the Bible, because the Bible gives a description of the world that is different than what most people will tell you. The truth in it allows you to suck the marrow out of life and love people in ways you thought weren't possible.
So his self-admittance to being a Christian, but apparent inconsistency with a real Christian understanding of things depressed me. Not just because of him, but because I know that the majority of people would agree with his three statements above.
And they miss out on the unimaginable freedom truth brings.
After we talked for awhile my German friend opened up about how he had just broken up with his girlfriend of a year and a half. I noticed him shaking. Somewhat. And I hurt for him. I knew he needed Jesus in a very real sense, but I also knew he probably wasn't confident enough in the reality of His existence to look to him.
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