René Breuel

What Makes a Speaker Persuasive?

18 05 2012

In his treatise on rhetoric, when Aristotle set out to express the factor that makes a public speaker most persuasive, he elected an element not many of us would choose. To Aristotle, a speaker’s most powerful weapon is not logos: it is not his unanswerable logic, argumentation, insightful content. It was not the eloquence and rhythm of his words. Nor was it pathos: someone’s passion, emotion, intensity of expression, full range of body moves.

Instead of logos and pathos, Aristotle chose instead ethos: the speaker’s character. For him, more important than what was said, or how intensely it was said, was who said it. A speaker’s character is his or her most persuasive trait. His ethos, comprised for Aristotle of wisdom, virtue, and goodness toward the audience, is what speaks loudest to the people who hear his words.[1]

I confess that I felt surprised, even disappointed, when I came upon Aristotle’s choice some years ago. True, if a speaker’s life does not match his words, the most eloquent of speeches won’t get a listening. But provided he is a decent person, I thought, and nothing could be held against him, clearly logos and pathos were much sharper arrows. Aristotle should just listen to Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream, and notice his choice of metaphors, the rhythm of language and repetition, his use of songs and scriptures to ground his argument, and the bursting, passionate delivery of his rising words – until he reaches a stirring climax with “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last” – to realize that ethos is no match for logos and pathos.

But as Aristotle’s observation remained in the back of my mind, and I came to listen to numerous speakers over the years, I grudgingly and slowly gave in to Aristotle. The master philosopher was right also on this one. And what convinced me of Aristotle’s choice for ethos was this: think of a good speaker you heard a while ago. You may remember a couple good insights; maybe a carefully constructed sentence, if he was really able and repeated the sentence at key points. You may remember a moving story or a passionate delivery.

But what stuck? What addresses you still? It is not words or emotions: it is the speaker’s soul. The questions that remain over time are: how good was that person? Did her humility lower my barriers, and did her benevolence attract my heart, so our personalities could meet? How much did she penetrate into me? Was there a communication of spirit? More than the delivery of a message, was there an encounter? Like Aristotle pointed out, it is the speaker’s spirit that communicates the most. Words may inform our minds, emotions may move our hearts, but we are permanently
transformed only if a speaker’s character is compelling, and a piece of his soul penetrates into ours.

I’m an avid speech listener. I will pay almost whatever cost to go hear the best speakers, and to savour that multiplicity of words, emotions and spirit packed beautifully into a few moments. I search across history to find and read the most compelling rhetoric ever articulated, trying to imagine what it was like to be there and listen, feeling the speaker’s soul project forward and move through the audience. I confess I have even prayed a couple times for God to let me experience in a dream what it was like was to sit under George Whitefield, as he swept whole cities and countries with his eloquence in the eighteenth century. But nothing makes my heart beats faster than to imagine myself among the crowds that once filled the beaches and hills of Galilee, as word got around that a prophet was in town, next to people who walked for weeks to hear him speak, and to relish Jesus’ words, and feel the gravity of his personality, and be infused by his spirit, and press through the crowd, until I could get a glimpse of his eyes, and go home with a piece of that soul in mine.

René Breuel

[1] Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric (New York: Penguin, 2005), book 2.1.5-9

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Tags: Aristotle, character, ethos, George Whitefield, I Have a Dream, Jesus, Martin Luther King, preaching, public speaking, rhetoric
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith

The Blank Menu

14 05 2012

The waiter looked confused. He shuffled the menus in his hand from left to right, then put one in the middle, then rechecked them again. “Why don’t you just give them to us,” I found myself thinking, “why all this fuss?” He opened and checked each menu again, and finally handed them to us. The quality paper and elegant font matched the fanciness of the restaurant, encrusted on a hill overlooking Rome and its domes, carved on marble floors and with a couple Ferraris adorning its entrance.

Vongole. Risotto ai funghi porcini. Gnochi alla romana. It looked like a grand meal was about to start. I read all options carefully, each seemed delicious, though I have a penchant for anything quattro formaggi. “How do the oysters sound to you?”, asked my father-in-law. “It’s on page 3.”

“Which oysters? Page 3… Oh, I see, here it says vongole, your menu is in English,.” That’s why all the fuss, I thought. The waiter had to select English menus for my in-laws, visiting us for a week, and menus in Italian for Sarah and I. Makes sense.

“But why doesn’t this menu have prices?,” asked Sarah. “I can’t choose if there are no prices.”

Her father smiled. “Choose anything you like, it’s on me. Don’t worry about the price.” Sarah and he always have discussions about prices: she wants to pay the lowest price possible, to negotiate the best bargain. Whenever she searches for some product online, like airfare, she puts cheap to start: cheap flights, cheap hostels, cheap car rental. “Look at the value,” says her father.

“My menu has prices,” I said. “Yours doesn’t?”

“No, it’s all empty. I can’t choose like this. Let me see yours.”

We switched, and her menu didn’t have any price indeed. Then we checked everybody’s menus: mine and my father-in-law’s had prices, but Sarah’s and her mom’s didn’t. That’s why the waiter was so confused; he had to match not only the language of the menus, but also those which had prices and those which didn’t.

“Oh, I see… The gentlemen pay, and the ladies choose blissfully without worrying about the price.” I had never seen this menu ethic before, though I must says it befits Italian culture well. The couple next to us were probably used to it, he in a suit and she in a long gown, even if now was lunch time. Maybe they are the ones who came in the Ferrari.

“How unjust! Let’s call the waiter and tell him that here it’s the women who pay…” Part of me found the whole think funny, the other part found it sexist and offensive. But since I could play the generous gentleman at the fancy restaurant and not pay for a dime, I’ll leave my protest for next time.

Sarah’s mom looked flattered to be treated like a lady, but Sarah and I put the priceless menu aside, and started to browse the one with the big expensive prices. Neither she nor I could choose our food if we did not know how much it cost, even if her father would treat us. How would you dare order a 180 euro lobster at someone else’s expense, even if if it was your father? Better to stay humble, and aim low, and enjoy the risotto at 28 euros, which was delicious enough. We were already ordering a plate for each of us, and feeling guilty for doing so; we usually share a plate and placate what remains of our hunger with the free portion of bread. She’s not the only one who’s cheap, I admit.

But this time it wasn’t only the bread which was free. Everything was free, thanks to her father. Actually, everything would be paid for, which means that for us everything was priceless. We could not evaluate the worth of a plate of food based on a number next to it. We are so used to it, and used to evaluate people and jobs and houses and countries by the numbers they come with. Remove the prices, and how we monetize and evaluate the whole of life, and we remain clueless.

Sarah’s father talks about value, but I savored my risotto thinking instead of another word: of grace. The worth of things is different when they don’t come at a price. For people who are used to evaluate worth with money, and to measure people for how much they make, and moments for how much they cost us, to receive things for free sometimes feel like they come at a lower value. We did not earn it, we did not conquer it with our sweat. They arrived just too easy.

But that’s what grace makes to us. It confuses and disorients; it points to a logic of life which is like a menu without prices. But it is the logic we arrived here by, granted with our lives and bodies and minds and families for free, and the logic we have to relearn if we are to grasp what life is about. For the fundamental quality of existence is that it is given. It is offered for free, and until we learn to remove prices from things and people, we reduce them to how much we think they are worth, and miss the whole splendorous generosity and fecundity of life.

René Breuel

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Tags: faith, food, grace, price, restaurant
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

A Tale of Two Politicians, and of Redemption

30 04 2012

Injustice smells. There is a nauseating odor to it: toxic, enraging, sad. And when we see someone who cheated and betrayed, someone who let us down, it is hard to find satisfaction more pleasing to our guts than to beat him up, to make him pay for his sins.

Two politicians made me think of this last week. The first was John Edwards, an once-promising American presidential candidate, charming in his looks and in his words, but who betrayed his terminally ill wife and lied about. Caught right in the middle of his presidential campaign, Edwards faced last week his trial. But as Washington Post contributor Christ Cillizza pointed out, it was a trial more about feelings than legal procedures: “This trial — regardless of the outcome — amounts to one last chance for the public to express its disdain for a man who cheated on his terminally ill wife, lied about it, fathered a child out of wedlock, lied about it and is now left searching for some strands of redemption or, at least, forgiveness.” It is another chance to look at a man who fell, fell from really high up, and make him pay.

The second politician, Charles Colson, had an even more spectacular fall: the Watergate disgrace, maybe the most famous corruption scandal of modern politics, when Colson helped a team of then-president Richard Nixon’s reelection committee to break into and tap the offices of his political opponents. Colson and others were sent to prison for this, but then he underwent a conversion, narrated in his bestseller Born Again, and became a devout Christian. Colson then dedicated the second part of his life to start a ministry that reaches out to prisoners, and become a major evangelical leader.

The thing is: Colson died last week, and, curiously, his obituaries at major newspapers have varied in tone. Some narrated the whole of his life, and praised his conversion and the good he made after it. Others, however, were cynical, and implied that his life change was just smokescreen, that Colson remained the Watergate dirty trickster for all his life, that the redemption of such a treacherous man could not possibly be true. How could it?

Redemption is hard to believe in. It really is. Especially because it is such a personal matter: I am treacherous too, I’m the one deserving condemnation, and I can’t possibly believe that I could find redemption. An observer of the reactions to Colson’s death put it well: “When you read those who smirk and dismiss the Chuck Colson conversion, … [r]ead a subtext that belongs to all of us: the fear that the criminal conspiracy we’ve all been a part of will be exposed, and just can’t be forgiven. Read the undercurrent of those who find it hard to believe that one can be not just pardoned, but “born again… That’s indeed hard to believe.”

But what if redemption is possible? What if people like Edwards or Colson can really be forgiven and start anew? What if I can be forgiven? What if I can end this life with my head raised high, with no finger pointing at me, redeemed by the grace of Christ, and have something like the following scenario for Colson’s death be true also for me?

I have to believe that when Chuck Colson opened his eyes in the moments after death that he didn’t hear anything about break-ins or dirty tricks or guilty consciences. I have to believe Mr. Colson heard a Galilean voice saying, “I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:36). I have to believe that he stood before his Creator with a new record, a new life transcript, one that belonged not to himself but to a Judean day-laborer who is now the ruler of the cosmos… That’s good news for guilty consciences, good news for recovering hatchet men and women like us.

Indeed it is good news, almost too good to be true. But true it is, and deliciously, liberatingly, scintillatingly good too. Redemption is possible, not despite the greatness of our sins, but because of the greatness of Jesus’ grace for us.

René Breuel

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Tags: Charles Colson, faith, forgiveness, Jesus, John Edwards, justice, politics, redemption, sin, Watergate
Categories : The Heart of Faith

Power Reveals

23 04 2012

In February 1st, 1933, two days after Hitler’s election as chancellor of Germany, a young theologian gave a radio address on the theme of leadership in Berlin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was only 26, and the address had been scheduled to go to the air for some weeks, but it couldn’t be more timely. Bonhoeffer denounced the Führer concept of leadership Hitler would come to embody, but couldn’t quite finish: his speech was cut off.

The full horrors of Hitler’s leadership were still far in the future, but Bonhoeffer’s address had a prophetic ring to it. It seemed to picture the consequences of the dominating and self-referential type of Führer leadership which loomed on the horizon, and to call people to a different vision. Hitler’s understanding of leadership, according to social historian James MacGregor Burns, was engulfed in his own suffocating sense of self. “While he claimed to seek power for the sake of the salvation of his country and for the purification of the Nordic race, this was self-deception. He identified his goal wholly with his own dominance and was willing to destroy his people for the sake of his own power.” As Hitler laid prostrated at an army hospital in the end of World War I, depressed and anguished over how he and his motherland had ended in defeat, the two fates seemed fused and confused in his mind.

The fate of vanquished Germany and his sense of defeat seemed to merge – as the hope of victory and his own power merged later – and perhaps too, as Walter Langer suggests, he was reacting to the defeat of Germany as if it were a rape of himself as well as his real and simulated mother (in Mein Kampf he was still referring to Germany as ‘she’).[1]

Bonhoeffer’s address, on the other hand, envisioned leadership differently: self-effacing, lucid, and, according to his theological frame, recognising of higher authority and above all of God’s authority. “The true Leader must always be able to disillusion… He must lead his following away from the authority of his person to the recognition of the real authority of orders and offices.” In other words, true leadership for Bonhoeffer meant a pointing away from oneself, it meant leading people to maturity and responsibility similar to how parents raise children to independence. “[H]e has to lead the individual to his own maturity… He must radically refuse to become the appeal, the idol, i.e. the ultimate authority of those whom he leads.”[2]

This was just the beginning. These two visions of leadership would clash in the coming years – the self-aggrandizing versus the self-giving, the powerful versus the powerless – and Bonhoeffer would be hanged for his opposition to the Nazi regime in 1945. Yet the crucial difference among them, if you look closely, is not how much power Hitler and Bonhoeffer got, but the central piece of each’s worldview: how they understood who God is. Bonhoeffer had quite a clear understanding of God as a transcendent, benevolent Person, and this informed his life and vision profoundly. In regards to leadership, he declares in his 1933 address, “Only when a man sees that office is a penultimate authority in the face of an ultimate, indescribable authority, in the face of the authority of God, has the real situation been reached… Alone before God, man becomes what he is, free and committed in responsibility at the same time.”

Hitler’s understanding of God, however, is difficult to precise, especially since he camouflaged his views to manipulate churches to his side, but certainly it was not the God of Bonhoeffer. It seemed to be instead an amalgam of self, the German nation and the Aryan race, fused by his hatred of betrayers and Jews, and the consequences are obvious: intoxicated by power, unchecked by any transcendent notion of goodness or responsibility, Hitler spilled over ever greater levels of his toxic self.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity,” said Abraham Lincoln, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”[3] That is so true. Power reveals who we are, and reveals even more the fundamentals of our worldview. If our God is self, or our happiness or success, power will burn in self-worship, and we will manipulate and hurt people around us. If our God is God, however, like it was for Bonhoeffer, a good dose of power may be tempting, but we have an allegiance higher than self, goodness beyond our ego, and will point people away from ourselves and toward maturity. And even if political power never comes our way, we will still live generously, and give of ourselves to others, and have the courage like Bonhoeffer to oppose and even foresee the havoc of someone who becomes his own god.

René Breuel

[1] James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 108.

[2][2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as quoted in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 141.

[3] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/give.html#oEYkcEHDrvMVDjwr.99

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Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, faith, God, Hitler, identity, idolatry, leadership, power, worship
Categories : Making a Difference

Can Faith Be Intelligent?

16 04 2012

No, it can’t. Actually, it can only be dumb, only naïve, only irrational. If it were rational and intelligent it wouldn’t be faith, after all. By definition.

This conclusion is being voiced by a growing number of skeptical voices worldwide. In our polarized, fragmented societies, lines are drawing sharp, and sharper if you talk about faith. Here in Italy, where both widespread secularism and institutional religion coexist still, sometimes in sync, sometimes in paradox, both afraid of the other, one hears this line of thought often. An atheist with which I debated this month at the university, for example, said during the debate: “When I believe, I don’t function rationally, with arguments.”[1]

This understanding of all faith as unthinking, blind faith is not a local phenomenon, however. “I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world,” defended Richard Dawkins, an English professor. “The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”[2] A prominent Italian atheist, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, showed a similar antithetical definition of faith and thought when he claimed, in a recent article, that “no one can be, at the same time, a great philosopher and a great theologian… to say that someone is a terrible theologian is in fact to give him honor: more or less like saying that he is a terrible muddlehead, or a terrible barker.”[3]

So then, does faith think? Is faith the a-thinking, persistent belief in things contrary to the evidence? Actually, true faith is the opposite: the lucid trust in what has showed itself to be evident. It is the trust that accompanies thought, the personal assent of a person operating fully rationally. As C. S. Lewis has put it,

“… a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad… And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, what would be merely stupid.”[4]

There are of course people, believers and unbelievers, who contrast faith and thought, and who defend that we have to stop thinking to have faith. They may be credulous, but this is not the Christian understanding of faith: faith in the Jesus who, when encountering Thomas, did not blaster him for unbelief in the resurrection, but who showed him the evidence: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.” And in the face of the evidence, Thomas responded lucidly, not as someone closed to where evidence may lead him, if it involves faith, but as a fully thinking person: “My Lord and my God!”[5]

Complexity is hard. When doubt arrives to the believer, it is easier to brush it aside, and to believe blindly. Equally, when evidence for God presents itself to the unbeliever, it is also easier to brush it aside, and to believe blindly that faith cannot possibly be true. But integrity asks us to believe thoughtfully, and to think openly. If we consider faith dumb by definition, not only will our eyes close to the evidence for it, but close also to the very rational inquiry we hoped to defend, and we may find ourselves as the ones blinded by a dumb kind of faith after all.

René Breuel

[1] Footage of this debate is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcGsVaOe9Is.

[2] Richard Dawkins, as quoted in the website of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, http://richarddawkins.net/quotes?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search%5Bauthor_eq%5D=Richard+Dawkins

[3] Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Una Porta Pia Intellettuale, http://odifreddi.blogautore.repubblica.it/2011/09/20/una-porta-pia-intellettuale/

[4] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2005), 138.

[5] John 20:27-28.

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Categories : Tough Questions

The Texture of Reality

9 04 2012

A touch. A fingertip feeling pulsing muscles and skin – the same fingertip that had felt the temperature of a glass of milk, that had flowed through curtains and childrens’ hair – is the fingertip Caravaggio uses for the climax of the Christian epic: Thomas finally settles his doubts and touches Jesus’ crucifixion marks. When the women and the other ten apostles told Thomas Jesus had appeared to them after his death, he could not believe it. But this touch…

The apostles did not believe it either when they first heard from the women – but then they saw him, and the unexpected became true. Still, Thomas could not believe it. And who can judge him? Even if his closest companions attested that they had seen Jesus alive after his death, Thomas could still hear the nails being driven into his hands, smell the blood flowing from his wounds, see the dust floating across the light beams as they placed Jesus’ body in a tomb. He had seen a dead body, lifeless, cold, still. And only undeniable proof could change Thomas’ mind: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” [1]

For Thomas, the days between the news of the resurrection and his own encounter with Jesus must have been anguished. He wanted to believe, of course; he wanted to see his old friend back to life, to see death defeated before his eyes. But the texture of reality around him breathed a different spirit: cold, earthly, indifferent, often cruel. Thomas saw the world turning gray on that Friday afternoon, his friend crucified on a cross and his hope crucified within. The touch of Jesus’ cold body must have lingered on his fingers, the touch of incarnated goodness now reduced to a static corpse, violated and beaten.

But then Jesus appears to him, seemingly beyond logic, and Thomas’ finger is warmed by life and blood. Hard bone, pulsing flesh, the sound of heartbeat; a live breathing body, not the lifeless corpse he had touched before. Caravaggio amplifies the drama of this encounter with a technique called chiaroscuro, which he had learned from Leonardo da Vinci: the background is dark, and light is poured on Jesus’ body. To Thomas this scene is more concrete and physical than anything around them. In fact, this moment will illuminate his life from now on: it will be the clarity which makes sense of this dark world, the understanding that will reshape his fears and hopes and loves and desires.

Thomas’ reality is changed. The light of this moment, the warmth of this touch will stay on with him. His finger will carry this warmth as he touches faces or mud or spears, as he grabs a hard stone or as he touches his brides’ arm. He won’t even be able to eat the essential elements of the Mediterranean cuisine – bread, wine, water, oil – without remembering the resurrected Christ. Thomas’ senses are impregnated; his sight and smell and touch and taste and ears carry the ring of the resurrection. The texture of reality now breathes and pulses with life, even as he ventures later into the dark cold background.

René Breuel

[1] John 24:25

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Tags: art, Caravaggio, doubt, Doubting Thomas, Easter, faith, hope, Jesus, resurrection, senses
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith

The Upper Hand of Evil

4 04 2012

Is goodness feasible in an evil world? Can we maintain innocence as we seek to enter and influence the tough dynamics of the marketplace, politics and society? Can we sustain love and generosity for people who disdain and even abuse us? Or, to put it in biblical language, is it possible to follow Christ through a path that does not lead to a cross? For anyone who has really attempted it, the practicalities of goodness are no small challenge.

A painting got me thinking about these things – actually, a painting based on a novel. Erich Heckel’s Two Men at the Table uses spectral colors and pointed lines to convey a tortured scene of anguish and tension. We see two men around a table in a claustrophobic little room, a piece of paper and a knife between them, a portrait which seems to haunt the encounter and a crude picture of Jesus on the cross, surrounded by a bloodied atmosphere. The older man leans forward, apparently challenging or menacing the younger man, who does not know what to do, oppressed by faces and colors alike.

Heckel drew inspiration for this scene from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, and subtitled the painting, “To Dostoyevsky.” In this novel, the masterful Russian writer crafts the story of Prince Myshkin, a “completely beautiful human being,” as Dostoyevsky described in a letter: a generous, kind, loving, forgiving, innocent young man, who enters St. Petersburg’s corrupt society and seeks to love people, only to be dismissed and manipulated in return. Myshkin is like a figure of Christ in an un-Christian world, and he disputes the love of a stunning femme fatale with brutal Rogozhin, who attempts to kill Myshkin and who has at home a portrait of Christ taken down from the cross as a dead body without life, without hint of a possible resurrection. Beautiful Nastassya oscilates between the innocent goodness of Myshkin and the harsh character of Rogozhin, until she decides for the worse man, who kills her in the end. Heckel’s painting seems to portray this last encounter between the two men at Rogozhin’s house, where they spent a tense night veiling over Nastassya’s dead body.

Dostoyevsky’s experiment to place a good man in an evil world highlights Myshkin’s tragic fate. People don’t know what to do with him, and his purity is misunderstood and abused. A scholar described that Myshkin is a “more riddling and more tragic figure of lost absolutes. In a world where God is simply dead flesh, a good man becomes simply an idiot.”[1] We may question at several points how much Myshkin resembles Jesus’ actual example, and notice that he lacks the fiber and force of the Jesus he represents, for instance. But Myshkin reminds us still of the upper hand of evil which seemed to hover over Jesus’ last hours: Jesus facing false accusations silently, beaten and spit at, at the hands of traitors and hypocrites who take his life at the end, and who mock his final prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”[2]

Yet, even as we sense the upper hand of evil seemingly everywhere, and wonder if we can emulate Jesus’ graceful endurance of mistreatment, we can also remember that the painting hanging on Rogozhin’s wall is not the end of the story. Jesus was lowered from the cross crumbled and broken, and the friends who had not fled could only weep that Friday afternoon. But Sunday was still to come, with news that would change everything; that broken body, and all the tragic human fate it sums up and represents, was gone. We may believe it or be wondering about it still, but the news of resurrection carried by the beams and airs of dawn electrified people with a cosmic kind of possibility: if that body was really gone, if Jesus had come back to life, then the matrix of reality is altered; tragedy is not the final result of goodness, nor is realism synonymous with pessimism. Evil may appear to have the upper hand, and goodness may lead to a painful cross, but there is life beyond pain, and hope beyond tragedy, and the model of one whose victory over evil changes the outcomes for us all.

René Breuel

[1] A. S. Byatt, Prince of Fools, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/jun/26/highereducation.classics.

[2] Luke 23:34

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Tags: art, crucifixion, Dostoevsky, Easter, Erich Heckel, ethics, evil, German expressionism, Good Friday, goodness, grace, Jesus, literature, resurrection, The Idiot
Categories : The Heart of Faith

An Evening of Questions

30 03 2012

Questions were coming from the right and left, thoughtful, poignant questions. What about suffering? The infinitude of religions? The dates established by Josephus? I and the atheist next to me were getting grilled, now by the audience. We had just debated about the existence of God, at a mix of café and literary meeting hub here in Rome, next to the university. I could see in people’s faces that they wanted to engage, that they welcomed a friendly forum where they could express their honest doubts, and honest they were.

I tried my best to answer their questions. One gal wanted to hear how can we believe in the Jesus story when we see similar stories of the sacrifice and resurrection of different gods in so many of the world’s myths, and I was glad that I had just written a Wondering Fair article just on that (thank you Lord!), and could share my thoughts with her. A guy wanted to me to name one example of a powerful person of faith which did not abuse his power for his own selfish gain. I tried going for the easy answer, Jesus, and he laughed with me, but then tried telling him a bit of William Wilbeforce, who used his wealth and influence as a member of the British Parliament to help abolish the slave trade. A student asked why would the Vatican have a subterraneous hidden library if it had nothing to hide – and this one I was glad I could by-pass, and said it would be best left for a Vatican official to respond. (Though he got me thinking, what lurks down there?)

But my favorite question came after the debate, while I was packing my things. A guy approached me with his girlfriend, both in their twenties. He was articulate but seemed afraid to voice his doubts, a bit ashamed even.

“I have a question, kind of. I know it is dumb, but still…”

“No please, go ahead,” I said, looking him in the eye, and his girlfriend nudged him too.

“I’m not into all this philosophy, I like being practical, and just wanted to know: why did Jesus turn water into wine?” I could not help but smile, and his girlfriend went on. “You know, people would get drunk with all that wine, and isn’t Jesus supposed to discourage that?” I kept on smiling, and he concluded. “Not just that, I just thought that, you know, he should be supposed to do important miracles, and this wine think is just, I don’t know, unimportant.”

I told them, “what a great question!”, and I could the see their faces relax, as if thinking, “Oh I’m glad, I thought it was going to sound stupid…” But I really meant it. It is a great question. I liked it not just because I could see the emotions bubbling in their eyes – a bit of fear, shame for asking a stupid-sounding question, courage to come forward and go talk with a stranger – but mostly because the issue behind their question is the most crucial existential question we have, more pressing that “is there life after death?” or “what is the meaning of life?”, and the question is: Who is Jesus? Who is this man who still haunts us, thousands of years later, who still attracts us like he did back then, who still gets us thinking about wine and water and the large and small stuff of life?

Many people see Jesus as the answer, but I like it even more when they see him as the question. And what a question he is. Scholar John Meier writes, “What is beyond dispute … is that Jesus of Nazareth is one of those perennial question marks in history with which mankind is never quite done. With a ministry of two or three years he attracted and infuriated his contemporaries, mesmerized and alienated the ancient world, unleashed a movement that has done the same ever since, and thus changed the course of history forever.” Answering who that man was is not small challenge.

I loved when people came to ask about hope and suffering and ethics and the origins of the universe. But those two were on to something. Who is this Jesus? The way we answer this question will change the way we answer every other existential question. Until we come to grips with it, a large piece of the puzzle of life and history will be unresolved, and of our lives too.

Ah, and if you want to know why did Jesus turn water into wine, Madi Simpson just wrote a fabulous article just about that…

René Breuel

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Tags: atheism, faith, Jesus, questions, religion
Categories : Tough Questions

“What if you’re wrong?”

19 03 2012

A girl asked atheist Richard Dawkins one day, “What if you’re wrong?” In typical deprecating fashion, Dawkins turned the question back to the girl, “But what if you are wrong?” [i]

The argument in Dawkins’ response, if you think about it, is essentially relativism. The reason we believe what we believe – in flying spaghettis, Zeus, or the Christian God – is because we were brought in a particular culture and nurtured in those beliefs. Had we been brought up somewhere else, our religious outlook would be different. As Dawkins has expressed in writing, “No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.”[ii]

The assumption behind this assertion is significant: geographical determination. None of us can pretend to Truth, because our belief is socially determined. If we would believe in Thor had we been born a Viking, how can we pretend that our belief in God could be true? Atheists like Dawkins conclude that the diversity of human belief across history is the definite proof against God. If we see humans inventing objects of worship so creatively and so pervasively – sacred cows, the sun, Mother Earth, or God – surely the monotheistic God is just another invention, maybe more complex and civilized than the others, but a human creation nonetheless.

But let’s turn the table again: “Yes, sure, but what if you are wrong?” By the same logic, the only reason someone like Dawkins believes in relativism is because he was brought up in contemporary Britain. His belief is also socially determined, so how can he assert that his view is right and every other religious view is wrong? How come every other view is relativized but his relativism remains absolute? Relativism is not only arrogant toward others, but thoroughly inconsistent with itself.

Still, the argument of religious diversity is an eloquent one. Humans are intrinsically religious, and will find something to worship no matter how strange the god or goddess may be. On what basis can we assert that one specific belief is true while so many others are wrong? Doesn’t religious diversity lead us to conclude that religion is essentially a human creation?

For me the evidence points precisely in the opposite direction. Humans are intrinsically religious because there is a real God who created us, and who we are searching for. We have this innate hunger because there is true satisfaction for our divine longing out there, just like our physical hunger demonstrates that there is real food that meets our needs. The fact that people eat the most bizarre objects – serpents, leafs, eggs of fish – is not proof that our physical hunger is a projection, but a precise proof of our need for food. Similarly, the diversity of belief across history is not proof that our soul hunger is a projection, but a precise proof that we have a craving for the divine, and will search for God even in the most unlikely of places.

But the skeptic may still rightly ask, “Ok, but on what basis do you claim that people search for God while adoring nature, and not, let’s say, search for the true goddess Aphrodite while worshipping the monotheistic God?” This is a great question, and could be dealt adequately only with another article. Yet atheism gives us a telling hint: if there were no God there would be no God to deny. “If there were no God, there would be no Atheists,” quipped G. K. Chesterton. Has there ever been an articulated, sustained movement like atheism against sacred cows or Aphrodite? Our very denial – of an eternal, omnipotent Father – assumes the form of what exists objectively. Our doubt mirrors our faith: we would not have to deny the existence of God if there was really no God to deny.

Belief in God could still be wrong, of course. But the diversity of human belief does not discredit faith, but rather, shows how forcefully we crave to worship something. If people are ready to adore even built statues at times, this shows us how urgent and true our spiritual hunger is. Religious diversity does not discourage robust faith, but is actually a compelling motivation to lead us to search, and discern, and surrender to, what is it that pulls our spirits so strongly toward worship.

René Breuel

[i] This video clip is actually the most seen Dawkins video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg

[ii] Richard Dawkins, as quoted in his own website, http://richarddawkins.net/quotes/10.

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Tags: atheism, belief, chesterton, Christianity, Dawkins, doubt, faith, religion
Categories : Tough Questions

Risks worthy of taking?

9 03 2012

Would I hold on to the tree branch or to my sliding shorts?

Well, before we arrive at the dilemma: only a week ago eight men and I stood with excited anticipation to enter our 23km jungle hike. The forecast of heat and rain proved correct, I pulled off my shirt to soak in every moment! Passing snakes, kangaroos, and iguanas, we pressed through cobwebs and swollen creeks of rushing water towards our final destination.

However, our steady advance came to a halt mid-stream a particularly deep creek. The rushing knee deep water caused a friend in front of me to lose balance, slip, and begin a slide into deeper, swifter, flowing currents. At this point I took a risk. Lunging forward, I took hold of him and pushed him into the hands of friends standing securely on higher ground. Unfortunately, as I grabbed him my waist went below the water line. Consequently, the rapidly flowing water pulled my shorts down to my thighs making it impossible to stand up! Clinging to my shorts, inclusive of all undergarments, I myself now had been dragged into the rapids! Fearing to lose total control I reached out to grasp a low lying tree branch overhanging the water. So there I was… stuck in rapids with one arm clinging to the branch, another to my shorts… and sadly, something would have to give. I cried out as I felt the remaining hope of pulling my shorts up to a socially appropriate position was tugged off the end of my shoes. Eight friends, now safely watching from shore, failed to see why I refused to leave the murky waters. Reluctantly pulling myself from the water to the sound of hysterical laughter and whistle blows, I really wondered if the risk I took to help my friend was really worthy of taking.

We all take risks, but what compels us to take them? Risks can be mundane, like riding in a car or going for a walk, or extreme. A soldier may jump on a grenade or a parent may enter a burning house. My conclusion is that we take risks mostly because we believe them to be worth taking, even though it may cost us our “shorts”.

When I read about the disciples of Jesus I am struck by the contrast of their disposition of fear to risk-taking courage. After Jesus is arrested and crucified the disciples were scared stiff, even going so far as to lock themselves into a room.[1] Yet, only a short time later the disciples are taking all sorts of risks to publically and enthusiastically to announce Jesus as the risen Lord.[2] Peter, who previously wouldn’t even admit to knowing Jesus, is suddenly risking his life taking physical and verbal beatings to tell others about Jesus![3] Acts records, “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they [the disciples] never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.[4] What compelled the disciples to move from fear to risk-taking courage? The witnessed resurrection of Jesus! The resurrection brought new life into the disciple’s vision and sent them forward with a message they believed was true, good and worth sharing— a risk worthy of taking.