Spirituality for the Rest of Us

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

Light and Truth in Rothko Chapel

11 04 2012

In the arts district of Houston, Texas, there is a chapel that embodies many modern and postmodern attitudes toward art and religion. Situated near the University of St. Thomas, the Rothko Chapel is neither exclusively Catholic nor Christian. While it promotes spiritual reflection and social activism, there are no crosses, icons, priests, choirs, or congregations. It features only several dark and somewhat drab murals of the famous American abstract-expressionist painter Mark Rothko. Visitors who come to Rothko Chapel sit and often meditate in front of Rothko’s black canvases hoping for a religious experience. While not my favorite paintings, they are nonetheless mesmerizing. One can easily get lost in the vastness of the murals and enjoy the peaceful coolness of the chapel, especially on a hot summer day in Houston. Aesthetic experiences aside, the chapel itself, which is shaped like a large octagon, is loaded with a number of assumptions about how religion should be done today.

These presuppositions are evident even before one sees the interior part of the chapel. Near the entrance, there is a small bookshelf that contains many of the world’s sacred texts. The King James Version of the Bible is on a shelf next to the Bhagavad-Gita, the Koran, the Upanishads, the Book of Mormon, and others. The impression one gets is that all of these books may contain some partial truth, but it is up to the individual to decide what works best. Religious pluralism, the idea that all religions are more or less the same, is clearly behind the words of the chapel’s main patron, Dominique de Menil:

The Rothko Chapel is oriented toward the sacred and yet it imposes no traditional environment. It offers a place where a common orientation could be found—an orientation towards God, named or unnamed, an orientation towards the highest aspiration of Man and the most intimate calls of the conscience.”[1]

Though this desire to be free from indoctrination and bias is sincere, one has to wonder whether the process of stripping away all particular religious symbols and names is helpful. Is it possible to create a universal, postmodern religion that sheds layers of history? If so, what does this new religion look like? What kind of ethics does it prescribe? Who is the God at its center?

Despite Rothko’s brilliance, his work for the chapel seems to raise these unanswerable questions. His dark, monochromatic murals have no discernible landscapes, symbols, or story lines. All of paintings are black or dark brown. If they communicate anything, it is that the world is confusing and suffers from a lack of metaphysical revelation. In this uncertain world devoid of light and truth, we are forced to create our own meaning and construct individual religious lives.

To be sure, much more could be said about the Rothko Chapel and its religious implications, but I’ll conclude with a few modest points. First, we have a desire for the sacred. People who visit Rothko Chapel hope that the space will inspire and speak Truth to them. They seem to know that secular materialism is a dead end, and they hope for a spiritual experience of some sort. Second, despite this desire, there is a deep, postmodern suspicion about the truth of any one religion. This explains why all the sacred texts in the chapel are on the same bookshelf and why all the paintings are dark and monochromatic. Any hint of privileging one story or religion above another would be a violation of postmodern religious pluralism. As a result, all that can be painted is blackness, and we get lost in the darkness.

The Christian story, for what it’s worth, stands in contrast to this last point. In the Gospel of John, we read about “The true light that gives light to everyone….”[2] The protagonist of John’s gospel, Jesus of Nazareth, later claims, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.”[3] These are audacious claims to be investigated seriously, but for me, they help explain the drastic differences between the Rothko Chapel and various Christian chapels around the world. Of course, there is plenty of bad Christian art and architecture, just as there is a definite beauty to the Rothko Chapel. But while the latter is constrained by a worldview which obscures light and denies truth, the Christian alternative proclaims Jesus to be the one who is both.

Paul McClure

[1] http://www.rothkochapel.org/

[2] John 1:9

[3] John 8:12

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Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

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

Why I stopped going to Church

21 03 2012

Ah, what power there is in a word. A skilled communicator agonizes over choosing precisely the right word for the occasion—that exact nuance in a verb, a noun, or an adjective, to guide the reader’s eye and the listener’s ear to the intended message. Miscommunication is always a danger. And it’s a danger that grows with passing days, for over time language becomes loose. With use, words morph to take on reduced and alternate meanings. Awesome. Gay. Sick. Wicked. You get the picture.

So, here’s a key word from a Christian’s vocabulary: “Church.” Imagine I’m an outsider to the whole Christianity thing. Let’s see if I can define “Church” by the way most Christians speak. …

“Do you want to go to Church with me, this weekend?” “The wedding will be held at the big Church, corner of Smith and Straight Street.” “I know you’re not really into Church, but why not give it a go?” “Wasn’t worship at Church great this last Sunday?”

Okay, let’s put it together. Church is an event, a building, a hobby, and a religious club?

Now, before you accuse me of nit-picking—“It’s all semantics, Dave. Ease up!”—realize the power of words. Christians believe it was with words that God spoke the universe into being; words are the means by which we acknowledge or deny Jesus; words convey the Gospel of life to those who haven’t heard; and words reveal the way we feel and think about our world. Maybe we need to dust off the word “Church” and get back to where it began. Until we do, our words may erect an unscalable barrier that blocks engagement with a Church-weary world.

Church: ἐκκλησία, ek-kle-siae, ecclesia. Nearly 500 years before Jesus, the ecclesia was the key assembly for ancient Athens’ democracy. Same with Rome. The ecclesia was the administrative body for the Kingdom. There were multiple Kingdom outposts, helping administer Rome’s Empire in the local regions. The ecclesia were there, like ambassadors for Rome, to make sure the everyday citizen experienced the flavour of the Kingdom. The ecclesia was not so much a place, or a program, but a people called out to represent the Kingdom in word and deed, spreading Greece’s or Rome’s influence wherever they went. The aim wasn’t to get outsiders into the ecclesia. The aim of the ecclesia was to get out and serve the citizens so they might freely align with the Kingdom.

Jesus borrowed this particular word, ekklesiai, from the political language of the day, to make sure his followers understood their call to be a new humanity, rather than forming another clique to replace the Pharisees, Sadduccees, Essenes, and Zealots. Rome was merely a cheap version of the true Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. And Christ called out and commissioned his disciples as a Kingdom outpost, to announce God’s reign and give this world a taste of how things run when God is in control (Mark 1:14-15; Luke 4:18-19). The Church isn’t a place you go. The Church is God’s pilgrim people, a body of believers selected and sent by God to administer the Kingdom and make Christ the King known by word and deed. Each region had its own ecclesia (the Church in Jerusalem, the Church in Corinth, etc.), but these various branch offices of the Kingdom were joined as one “catholic Church” as the Apostle’s Creed describes, united in Kingdom business. (Sounds ecumenical, no? Hmm.)

So, back to the present. We use “Church” with almost the exact opposite of Jesus’ intent. Instead of going to the world, we expect people to come to us. We think that getting our “lost” friends into a building to hear a religious service is the end-game for our witness. And we’ve offered the world the Church now and Heaven later, instead of the Kingdom of God which starts now and only grows in influence until the day Christ the King returns and sets everything right.

My local church knows how to celebrate when we get together on Sunday. But don’t be confused. The gathering of the ecclesia for corporate worship may attract some outsiders to align with Christ’s Kingdom. But the most powerful witness by far is when we serve up for our neighbours a taste of the Kingdom, whether by the way we love, the way we listen, or even the way we cook.

Yes, words are powerful. The average ‘unchurched’ person has no interest in joining a religious club and tying up their sunny Sunday inside a building. But when the Church is truly the ecclesia of Christ, there is nothing more attractive and no more powerful witness. It’s our love for each other, and radical acts of loving service for those outside our community, that best points people to Jesus. And this will only happen when we stop heaping our salt in a pile, and hiding our light under a building. I mean a bushel.

So, what is the Spirit of God saying to His Church today? In short, “Get Out!” Follow Christ outside the Church building and into the midst of our post-Christendom culture. And let’s stop going to Church, and start being the Church Christ gave His life to establish—the kind of Church against which even the gates of Hell will never prevail.

Dave Benson

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Tags: building, church, ekklesia, food, kingdom, language, religion, semantics
Categories : On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith

More wine, more glory

24 02 2012

The story of the wedding at Cana in John 2, the account of Jesus turning water into wine, is one of the best known episodes in the New Testament, if not the whole Bible. The author, John, tells us that this was the first miraculous sign by which God revealed his glory (v. 11). Ever thought about what it means that the first sign God gives to reveal his glory, the substance of his character, is the production of alcohol?

Let’s set the scene. In the story, Mary, Jesus and his disciples are at a wedding. Some way through the celebrations, Mary alerts Jesus to the fact that the hosts have run out of wine, to which Jesus replies, “Woman, why do you involve me?” (v.4). I would love to know with what sort of tone Jesus said this, it seems like such a curious thing for him to say! Was he absorbed in a fascinating conversation that he didn’t want to wrench himself away from? Was he just generally tired of his mother’s interference?? I’m not sure, and we’ll never be sure, because his question is not answered. We don’t know why Mary involves Jesus here. She ignores his question, giving instructions to the servants simply to do whatever he tells them. They obey, filling some bath sized jars with water, which Jesus turns into fine wine.

How can it be that John associates this act with the revelation of God’s glory? I mean, seriously?? There’s a wedding. The party is in full swing, probably has been for days, and what started out as a copious amount of alcohol turns out not to be enough. The pressure is on the hosts to keep their guests fed and watered. Why should God help out?

Besides, by the time Mary intervenes, it’s quite likely that Jesus is surrounded by people who are drunk or heading that way. As the master of the banquet says to the bridegroom in verse 10, ‘Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink…’ The presenting problem in John 2 is that both the good wine and the cheaper wine have been consumed. It’s all gone. It’s in this context that Jesus says, ‘Okay, you’ve run out of booze. Why do you involve me?’

We don’t know why Mary thought her son should be involved in this domestic crisis. John merely tells us that this spectacular deed – turning water into wine – is the first sign through which Jesus, God in the flesh, revealed his glory. Basically, John is telling us that the glory of holy God is revealed first and foremost in an act of extraordinary, controversial and extravagant blessing, something designed not to put Israel on the map or tighten up the moral code; something designed to keep the party going, or perhaps to get the party truly started.

The wedding at Cana is not about taking care not to overdo it (that’s for another time and place). And it’s not a story to tell if you want people to believe that the emphasis in Christianity is on sin.

According to John, God’s first sign to the world, his first attempt to show people what he’s really like, is to give them more of something they really enjoy, more wine and more of the best, more goodness, more fun, more life, more reasons to celebrate. He gives them more when they thought they’d had enough. Not mindless excess, but the overflowing abundance of life.

Why did Mary involve God? We don’t know. But God got involved at her request. The wedding at Cana shows us not only that God isn’t afraid to associate his glory with something earthy, like wine, but that the divine Creator submits himself to be moved by his creatures. Jesus told Mary that his time had not yet come (v. 4) yet at her prompting, he acts. Wine for them, glory for him. In some mysterious way, God’s heavenly glory is intricately connected with good things on earth. Next time you order a bottle for friends, remember that.

Madi Simpson

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Tags: faith, fun, Gospel of John, Jesus, joy, laughter, morality, wedding at Cana, wine
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

The Frustrated Photographer

22 02 2012

I have a love–hate relationship with photography. Ever since I was a kid, my recollection of events and places is tied to particular images either mum or I captured. My earliest memory is as a two year old, on a family holiday to New Zealand: we’re dressed in bright yellow plastic ponchos and I’m clinging to dad’s leg as this little tour boat cruises into the spray of a majestic waterfall. Flicking through mum’s extensive photo collection as a teen, I discovered this precise photo, detail for detail. Which came first: the experience or the image? I still don’t know.

Colloquially, my condition is known as ‘snap happy’. Once I possessed my first camera around ten, the world was mine. Any experience could be reproduced with an image. And there was no better experience to capture than a hike. Atop gusty Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysia; besides the still reflections of the Rockies on Lake Moraine; traversing craggy peaks at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania—wherever it may be, my trusty camera is by my side, ready to re-present the glories of God’s creation in a negative. So when we returned to New Zealand this last holiday—a haven for happy snappers—it was no surprise (or joy) to my wife Nikki that my camera came too.

On my good days, I love photography. The image is a marker stone celebrating where we’ve been. It reminds me of this impalpable beauty, this sense of wonder standing like a toddler before a world too big to fathom. Take the photo below. The day after a dump of fresh snow, Nik and I are tramping up to 1800 metres at Mueller Hut. We’re opposite New Zealand’s most famous peak, Aoraki, the cloud piercer—better known as Mt. Cook. I didn’t want to forget this! Simply stunning. I wielded my camera like a priest swinging his thurible as smoke fills the temple: click, click, click—my spirit sang something too deep for words as pixel met pixel in a panorama of praise. It didn’t seem to matter how many shots I snapped, I could never do this justice.

But herein lies my ‘hate’ relationship with photography, for I am a frustrated photographer. How much the flat image leaves out! Looking at this image, you just don’t get it! You can’t see the peaks past the white-space of the photo’s border. You aren’t chewing on fresh snow as it revives your energy following the tiring climb. You can’t sense the sun beating on your shoulders, or hear the song of the Kia as it swoops from God-knows where to steal your lunch! And that’s not even to mention the groan of the glacier and the thunderous crack of the occasional avalanche, all in the company of my beautiful and athletic wife! You see an image; I recall an experience. Two dimensions cannot do Mueller Hut justice! How irreducible is the grandeur of a mountain!

And yet, I do try. I persist in taking image after image, reducing the wonder to a digital reproduction viewable on my 5cm² preview screen. But why? My frustration rises, though it’s no longer about the view. It’s about me.

It’s so subtle. The shift from praise to power is subconscious. Unlike my wife, content to swim in the ineffable experience—a small part of the whole, taking beauty into herself—I desire to ‘capture’ the moment. What is bigger than me must be reduced, made manageable—it’s to be controlled and brought out to impress friends. “Wow, you take great photos; where was that?” Yes, forget the scenery and notice my grandeur. My camera has become a mirror, celebrating my skill and reflecting my ego. One photo is never enough: I squat in the snow seeking just the right angle, and for good measure take another photo of my wife’s back—the frustrated photographer’s wife—as she treks on to greater vistas.

I and It, or I and Thou … how do we engage the world? Perhaps you’re familiar with this classic distinction made by Martin Buber way back in 1923. On that magnificent hike, seeing everything as through a lens, I managed to reduce creation, the Creator, and even my wife to an It. It is merely an object detached from myself, waiting to be managed, captured and controlled for my own purposes—a flat image to induce excitement over past experiences or adulation from impressed onlookers. Like a scientist staring only through a microscope, I was killing the specimen to keep it still. When the world reduced to an It, wonder gave way to frustration.

The same temptation presents in all manner of fields: the frustrated teacher, frustrated theologian, frustrated husband, frustrated son, the frustrated human. In trying to ‘capture’ something—whether a panorama or a potentate—we inevitably reduce it to something less than it is in order to bring it under our control. But creation and the Creator defies reduction. At the heart of our existence is relationship with an unbounded other, Thou. Approach with wonder; engage with delight—my best attempts to understand the other and re-present the experience are but a humble invitation to live beyond myself: my power, and my control.

The frustrated photographer in me is still learning to let go. I can’t capture a mountain; how much less can I capture the eternal Thou in whom we all live, move and have our being. Without meaning to sound cliché, I am so thankful to God who has already offered us the perfect image in His Son.[1] I don’t yet perceive or relate as I ought, but by His humble self disclosure and ineffable light, I’m beginning to see everything else clearly.

Dave Benson

[1] John 14:9; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:3.

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Tags: Buber, capture, God, I-It, I-Thou, image, photo, wonder, worship
Categories : On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, The Heart of Faith

The Fellowship of Runners

20 02 2012

When Rolling Stones magazine interviewed U2 singer Bono, and asked which kind of music turns him on, Bono answered in a surprising and self-revealing way. “The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.”[1]

Music that runs toward or away from God. I would imagine Bono would choose songs by their rhythm, by their catchy chorus, by their ability to move a stadium with its melody. Maybe he would be attracted to romantic lyrics, peppered with sensuality and longing, or maybe to music that resounds in people’s hearts and influences a generation. Yet Bono goes for our existential core: our gut reaction before ultimate reality, our instinctive surrender to God’s presence or haunted flight from his face.

I, for one, am more of a surrender type of guy, but I’m fascinated by the fellowship of runners. You know, by that anguished avoidance of God, stubborn and defiant, which tries to outrun infinity and outsmart omniscience. I admire this kind of persistence – it feels almost like a little dwarf’s rebellion – and, if I may confess some sadistic impulses, I enjoy seeing people avoid the inevitable and fight until the last breadth against God. It is entertaining. It is like children kicking and struggling against a spoonful of chocolate, only to enjoy it the minute it enters their mouth. I’m not quite sure why I enjoy this final struggle, maybe because I see it s the final tantrum of sin before the flood of grace, but when I see someone running away from God, I smile, and try to stay around long enough to see God catching up.

Can I share some scenes of my sadistic voyeurism? Let’s start with red meat, you know, a good sinner of old, a mighty oak falling down. Augustine narrates in his Confessions how he tried to run from God, and revels in the foolishness of it: “I would only hide thee from myself, not myself from thee.”^{^[2]} Augustine’s is a fascinating journey, elaborated by a great soul-physician in the Confessions, until he comes to the decisive moment: “Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open by deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”^{^[3]}

Good stuff, eh? I like C. S. Lewis’ final struggles too, and the silent resistance he tried to muster to the last, even against a palpable sense of God’s presence. Lewis narrates in his autobiography:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him who I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps the most defected and reluctant convert in all England.”[4]

But let me acknowledge it too. Maybe I enjoy seeing these moments in others not much for the agony’s sake – though that is fun, I admit – but maybe, if I may face my own resistance, because I enjoy the moments when God finally wins me over, and overflows my opposition, and reluctantly I let myself kneel and pray. I like seeing it in others because I see that this reluctance is not only my own, and even a stubborn like myself is within the reach of grace. I see David trying to make his bed in the depths, and feel I’m not down there by myself – there’s God, and there’s David hiding too, who tells me to shush and go hide somewhere else. If these dwarves dared to resist God, my own short arms and legs don’t seem to so foolish either. I can rest, and open myself, and let God arrive, and thank him for seeking such a small-minded fool as I.

René Breuel

[1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bono#Rolling_Stone_interview_.282005.29

^{^[2]} Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, ed. and trans. Albert Cook Outler (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2002), X.II.2.

^{^[3]} Ibid., X.XXVII.38.

[4] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life (Orlando: Harcourt, 1955), 228-229.

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Tags: Augustine, Bono, C S Lewis, Confessions, faith, God, Music, religion
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Flourishing in a Pill

13 02 2012

In the 2011 film Limitless, Eddie Morra is a down on his luck author struggling with writer’s block, unmet deadlines, losing his girlfriend, and a generally miserable life. He is virtually at rock bottom when he encounters an old acquaintance that makes him aware of an experimental drug called NZT-48, which supposedly allows humans to access 100% of the brain’s power, as opposed to the usual 20%. Morra is initially skeptical, but, considering things can’t really get much worse for him, he takes the pill.

Much to his surprise, it works! Morra is instantly able to achieve a focus and intensity that would have been previously unimaginable. He finishes the book he had been struggling with for months in four days. He is instantly able to solve problems and to see possibilities with unprecedented accuracy. He uses his newfound (or spectacularly enhanced!) abilities to reinvent himself as rich, powerful, and all that he ever wanted to be. He becomes, in short, a kind of superhuman who is able to do anything and everything well.

It’s an intriguing idea. After all, who hasn’t, at some point, wished that the ideal person we wish we could be were attainable through simply swallowing a pill? Who hasn’t wished that the struggle and strain of changing things we don’t like in our lives could be avoided? Who hasn’t longed for their own abilities and skills to be quickly and painlessly enhanced—or for the existence of new ones entirely? Who hasn’t wished that everything important they had ever learned or experienced could be instantly accessed and productively employed?

Peter Singer and Agata Sagan recently explored similar ideas in a New York Times piece called “Are We Ready for a ‘Morality’ Pill?” If all human decision-making is reducible to chemical combinations in the brain, then why shouldn’t we just tweak the chemistry a bit here and there to produce more moral people? Or, undertake a massive overhaul if necessary? We already do this with antidepressants and other drugs, after all. Why not with morality? It would certainly solve a lot of problems, after all. Who cares if we have to medicate people into behaving themselves if the end result is good?

Whether we are thinking about pills to give us superhuman abilities, as in Limitless, or pills to make us moral, as in Singer and Sagan’s article, questions about the nature and extent of human freedom instantly come into view. Is human freedom real or just a pleasant illusion that we like to perpetuate? If we are popping pills to manipulate our brains into doing what we want, is it still us that is acting? In what sense? Have we crossed some kind of a line when the good things that we want in life come via a chemical alteration of our brain states? We intuitively feel like our freedom has somehow been violated, but why?

These are difficult questions, to be sure. The lines are fuzzy and not easy to discern. But however we resolve these questions, from a biblical perspective it is clear that human beings are more than just brain chemistry. We are created by God to freely reflect God’s image (or not). Meaningful human freedom is presupposed on virtually every page of Scripture. From Joshua’s “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15) to Jesus’ “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29), the exhortation (implicit or explicit) to choose where our allegiance lies, resounds throughout the biblical narrative.

While human freedom obviously depends upon and is exercised through brain chemistry, it cannot be reduced to this alone. This does not do justice to our experience of freedom, our experience of moral striving, our experience of hard-won changes in our life, of skills and capacities deliberately cultivated and disciplined. Most of us, if we are honest, think that if something is worth having it is worth pursuing and striving for. If the kind of freedom that gives our lives meaning and accomplishment is an illusion, it is an illusion of the most necessary kind—an illusion we cannot live without.

And yet, ironically enough, the Bible also describes the kind of flourishing we seek as something that comes apart from endless human striving (moral or otherwise). In Jeremiah 31:33-34, the prophet says this to a group of weary exiles who are well acquainted with the fruits of poorly exercised freedom:

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbors,
or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. Human flourishing is, ultimately, a gift of God. It is a gift, however, that is given in concert with our own desires and efforts to align our desires and aspirations with what is good and right and true. It is a gift that is given to those who seek to know God, who acknowledge their need of God, and who receive God’s gift of forgiveness. It is, fundamentally, a gift that comes not via a pill but a relationship with our Creator.

Ryan Dueck

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Tags: choice, faith, flourishing, freedom, Limitless, morality, Peter Singer
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

The Epic Story, Part II

3 02 2012

In my previous post, I suggested that in order to make sense of our little and everyday stories, we need a view from above. Like a cosmic director, God has revealed the broad contours of an ongoing script, and invites us to make sense of our lives from His perspective.[1] Scenes one and two are past: God designed us for good, but we’ve each rebelled and sought a script we prefer, and in the process have been damaged by evil. Now we turn to scene three for a paradoxical twist as God sorts out the mess we’ve made. …

Scene #3: Restored for Better. The Director could have fired the cast for a do-over. But instead, He entered the story through His Son. When? The Roman Empire, Israel, when BC became AD. How? Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus uniquely claimed to be God in the flesh, the long awaited and predicted Saviour (Messiah/Christ) of the world. He gave us a model of how life was meant to be lived, under his Father’s rule in a Kingdom of peace and love. He called us to switch scripts, and align with God’s form to be forgiven and free. As the perfect character, Jesus stood in for our failures. He took the blame, and absorbed evil in love, crucified to cover our sin. He took the worst the world could throw at him, but after it all, rose from the dead—a real historical event worth checking out. This demonstrated that death was defeated, and the story would go on. …

Scene #4: Sent Together to Heal. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. When we admit our failure to God, turning from our way to trust the Director’s solution in Jesus, then a new act begins. God starts the process of healing us from the inside out—revealing the part only I can play—so we can go together in the power of His Spirit to help heal a hurting world. We partner with God to restore relationships and a broken planet. No waiting until the story’s happy ending, we have a mission right now to give the world a preview of the play’s final scene. Until we exit the stage, our role is to follow Jesus by absorbing evil in love, and reconnecting everyone with a good God who designed us to be free.

Scene #5: God Sets Everything Right. For all our best efforts, we’re still broken. By ourselves, the world will never fully heal. The Director is patient, and wants everyone to freely choose the role for which we were made. But, the day is coming when Jesus will return, judge the world, and set everything right. We’ve all fallen short, so we need God’s mercy. As the curtain closes, every actor is brought back to give account for their actions. If you’ve accepted God’s forgiveness, your real story is just starting: a restored earth with no hate, pollution, poverty, or war. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—will be the centre of it all, and we’ll be free in this love. But what should God do with those of us who reject Him? Everything good, true, and beautiful comes from God, so apart from Him, all that’s left is Hell. Hell is when we exclude ourselves from the Director’s plans for a do-over.

You, in short, are an actor in an epic story. But the Director has given you unprecedented freedom to choose your own adventure. All our stories, however, hinge on the lead role. So how will you respond to Jesus? If you see your story in this script, and God has grabbed your heart, then tell Him. Life can begin again right now …

“God, you designed me for good, but I’m made my own way. I’ve rejected you, hurt others, and damaged your world. I’m sorry. Thanks for entering the story in Jesus, to restore me for better. Forgive me for my sins, and fill me with your Spirit. I want to follow you now, bringing healing where there’s hurt. Help me love like you do, as a preview of how the whole world will be when you set everything right. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Dave Benson

[1] See http://issuu.com/nikanddaveabroad/docs/epic_story, http://thebigstory.org.au/ and http://issuu.com/nikanddaveabroad/docs/big_story for a graphical take on The Epic Story.