When do differences create enmity and anger?
This is what Socrates asks Euthyphro. First, Socrates considers whether differences about numbers lead to enmity: "Suppose for example that you and I, my good friend, differ about a number; do differences of this sort make us enemies and set us at variance with one another? Do we not go at once to arithmetic, and put an end to them by sum?" (Plato, 388)
We do, answers Euthyphro.
Socrates considers some other possibilities: differences about measurements, or how much something weighs?
Euthyphro agrees that we also have means by which to resolve these disagreements with one another.
Socrates continues: "But what differences are there which cannot be thus decided, and which therefore make us angry and set us at enmity with one another? I dare say the answer does not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I will suggest that these enmities arise when the matters of difference are the just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable. Are not these the points about which men differ, and about which when we are unable satisfactorily to decide our differences, you and I and all of us quarrel, when we do quarrel?" (388)
In other words, human beings will be reasonable and work out agreements about many things. They don't set out to make enemies where they can press on together. But about matters of what is just or unjust, they will struggle to find means to "satisfactorily" decide the differences. Being satisfied is key here. Deciding that someone else's measurement is more accurate is a much easier step than renouncing one's sense of good and evil in favor of another's. We hold very close to our heart what we deem to be good and just.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Thursday, July 21, 2016
A Shattering Experience
Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance writes about the importance of teaching Christian doctrine to children: "One of the great tragedies of modern life is that the neglect of doctrinal teaching to children at an early age, has meant that their powers in other areas of intellectual life are often developed out of all proportion to their powers in Christian and spiritual understanding..." (School of Faith, 39)
In other words, Torrance sees a parallel process in learning a basic grammar of doctrine alongside our other early learning endeavors.
Lack of balance here causes problems later down the road in life. What sort of problems might this cause? Torrance writes: "Conversion in the psychological sense takes place when, as a result of such an unbalanced development and the radical dichotomy it involves, adaptation to the truth can only be a shattering experience. But that need not happen if Christian instruction and learning have been properly fulfilled." (39)
Torrance's choice of metaphor is interesting here - "a shattering experience." We understand what it means for a conversion to be painful or difficult. Family and friends don't understand. Jobs are relinquished. But shattering? What exactly shatters?
Presumably, a conversion shatters when reconciliation and growth in the life of faith come at a point when many other habits or traits of thought or life have become fully ingrained that then have to be given up or unlearned. It is shattering psychologically. It feels like we are in pieces.
'Shattering' conversions are certainly still conversions. Indeed, even if we are not shattered by the experience, we feel some pressure of the significance of it, don't we? Shouldn't we? Yet, as Torrance says, the one who has had a shattering conversion may truly yearn for an alternate reality in which he or she had learned doctrine as a child as with other building blocks of life.
In other words, Torrance sees a parallel process in learning a basic grammar of doctrine alongside our other early learning endeavors.
Lack of balance here causes problems later down the road in life. What sort of problems might this cause? Torrance writes: "Conversion in the psychological sense takes place when, as a result of such an unbalanced development and the radical dichotomy it involves, adaptation to the truth can only be a shattering experience. But that need not happen if Christian instruction and learning have been properly fulfilled." (39)
Torrance's choice of metaphor is interesting here - "a shattering experience." We understand what it means for a conversion to be painful or difficult. Family and friends don't understand. Jobs are relinquished. But shattering? What exactly shatters?
Presumably, a conversion shatters when reconciliation and growth in the life of faith come at a point when many other habits or traits of thought or life have become fully ingrained that then have to be given up or unlearned. It is shattering psychologically. It feels like we are in pieces.
'Shattering' conversions are certainly still conversions. Indeed, even if we are not shattered by the experience, we feel some pressure of the significance of it, don't we? Shouldn't we? Yet, as Torrance says, the one who has had a shattering conversion may truly yearn for an alternate reality in which he or she had learned doctrine as a child as with other building blocks of life.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Two Wonders
A great salvation suggests a great fall. The two go hand in hand. There is room in the Christian life for a deep consideration of both. Having only the great salvation and not the great fall wouldn't be the Christian gospel. Perhaps this is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace." It doesn't cost much.
A stanza from Elizabeth Clephane's hymn reads thus: "Upon the cross of Jesus/mine eye at times can see/the very dying form of One/who suffered there for me:/and from my stricken heart with tears/two wonders I confess,/the wonders of redeeming love/and my own worthlessness. (Trott, A Sacrifice of Praise, 558). She calls them two wonders. They surprise us. It is their nature to be deeper and more mysterious than we expect to understand fully.
P.T. Forsyth reflects on how we might proceed with our two wondrous wonders: "It is for the redeemed to magnify the cost, the preciousness, of redeeming grace. It is not for the Redeemer. It would be ungracious in Him to do so. He brought the grace to us, and brought it as grace, not as cost; He offered it as a finished thing, rich and ripe, in its fullness and freeness of beauty, love, sorrow, and searching power. For Him to dwell on the cost, who paid it, and to do so while paying it would have been to rob grace of its graciousness, to impair its wonder, amplitude, and spell. But would it not have been just as ungracious, as much of a reflection on grace, if it had made no apostle or saint leap forward, to go behind the constraining liberating, re-creating charm of grace, and to draw out for our worship the cost of it - what holy Fatherhood paid in forgiving and what He was too generous to obtrude, till it pricked the conscience and woke the wonder of the forgiven?" (The Holy Father, 18-19) To use Clephane's terminology to interpret Forsyth, the first wonder of redeeming love is pure gift - the life of Christ given for us. The second wonder of "my own worthlessness" happens second, when I look at the gift that has been given, and find myself, in Forsyth's delightful paradoxical phrase, 'leaping forward to go behind' the gift to find the cost of it. And this draws out my worship.
The charm of grace sends me searching for the cost of it.
A stanza from Elizabeth Clephane's hymn reads thus: "Upon the cross of Jesus/mine eye at times can see/the very dying form of One/who suffered there for me:/and from my stricken heart with tears/two wonders I confess,/the wonders of redeeming love/and my own worthlessness. (Trott, A Sacrifice of Praise, 558). She calls them two wonders. They surprise us. It is their nature to be deeper and more mysterious than we expect to understand fully.
P.T. Forsyth reflects on how we might proceed with our two wondrous wonders: "It is for the redeemed to magnify the cost, the preciousness, of redeeming grace. It is not for the Redeemer. It would be ungracious in Him to do so. He brought the grace to us, and brought it as grace, not as cost; He offered it as a finished thing, rich and ripe, in its fullness and freeness of beauty, love, sorrow, and searching power. For Him to dwell on the cost, who paid it, and to do so while paying it would have been to rob grace of its graciousness, to impair its wonder, amplitude, and spell. But would it not have been just as ungracious, as much of a reflection on grace, if it had made no apostle or saint leap forward, to go behind the constraining liberating, re-creating charm of grace, and to draw out for our worship the cost of it - what holy Fatherhood paid in forgiving and what He was too generous to obtrude, till it pricked the conscience and woke the wonder of the forgiven?" (The Holy Father, 18-19) To use Clephane's terminology to interpret Forsyth, the first wonder of redeeming love is pure gift - the life of Christ given for us. The second wonder of "my own worthlessness" happens second, when I look at the gift that has been given, and find myself, in Forsyth's delightful paradoxical phrase, 'leaping forward to go behind' the gift to find the cost of it. And this draws out my worship.
The charm of grace sends me searching for the cost of it.
Monday, May 16, 2016
Unawakened
How do we learn? Pagan thought considered that all learning is recollection: we already know it. It just has to be drawn out of us. Socrates says as much to Meno - "the soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all...for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection." Meno asks Socrates to explain this: "what do you mean by saying that we do not learn?" Socrates gets mad at Meno for trying to trick him: "I told you, Meno, just now that you were a rogue, and now you ask whether I can teach you, when I am saying that there is no teaching, but only recollection; and thus you imagine that you will involve me in a contradiction." In other words, Meno must think Socrates is a pretty big fool to ask him to give him new information about how human beings can't learn new information. Shame on you, Meno. (Plato, trans. Jowett, 361)
Socrates goes on through a lengthy demonstration to seek to prove his point, asking only questions. Not giving new information, but deriving information from the pupil. The boy's knowledge is elicited. It is not new, it is a recovery.
From a more Christian perspective, Glenn Clark reflects on the love of a friend: "Do you love the spirit of your friend, or do you just love the outside of him? If you love his clear complexion, his baritone voice, his straight Greek profile, his splendid figure, and stop there - then your love is not the true penetrating heavenly love. But if you love the deep wells of quietness, deep, deep down inside of him, if you love the Christlike quality of his compassion, or his yet unawakened capacity for intelligence, for endurance, for heroism, then you are beginning to get to the roots of him." (Benson, Disciplines for the Inner Life, 107) This reflects more of a Christian understanding of spiritual gifts: the Holy Spirit comes to live in the Christian. There is something real and powerful there, but it may be asleep, unawakened, and the Christian friend seeks to awaken it.
Finally, P.T. Forsyth explores Jesus' seeming messianic modesty: "Christ never told His disciples He was Messiah till it was borne in on them by contact with Him. He never told them till, by the working of the actual Messiahship upon them, they found it out. Revelation came home to them as discovery. It burst from experience. So gracious is God with His revelation that He actually lets it come home to us as if we had discovered it. That is His fine manner - so to give as if we had found. His shining may even be forgotten in our seeing." (The Holy Father, 17) What is it about our learning that feels new? It feels like we didn't know it before. Socrates suspected we forgot we knew it. Forsyth suspects that our Father graciously lets us "discover things" that he already has for us.
Socrates goes on through a lengthy demonstration to seek to prove his point, asking only questions. Not giving new information, but deriving information from the pupil. The boy's knowledge is elicited. It is not new, it is a recovery.
From a more Christian perspective, Glenn Clark reflects on the love of a friend: "Do you love the spirit of your friend, or do you just love the outside of him? If you love his clear complexion, his baritone voice, his straight Greek profile, his splendid figure, and stop there - then your love is not the true penetrating heavenly love. But if you love the deep wells of quietness, deep, deep down inside of him, if you love the Christlike quality of his compassion, or his yet unawakened capacity for intelligence, for endurance, for heroism, then you are beginning to get to the roots of him." (Benson, Disciplines for the Inner Life, 107) This reflects more of a Christian understanding of spiritual gifts: the Holy Spirit comes to live in the Christian. There is something real and powerful there, but it may be asleep, unawakened, and the Christian friend seeks to awaken it.
Finally, P.T. Forsyth explores Jesus' seeming messianic modesty: "Christ never told His disciples He was Messiah till it was borne in on them by contact with Him. He never told them till, by the working of the actual Messiahship upon them, they found it out. Revelation came home to them as discovery. It burst from experience. So gracious is God with His revelation that He actually lets it come home to us as if we had discovered it. That is His fine manner - so to give as if we had found. His shining may even be forgotten in our seeing." (The Holy Father, 17) What is it about our learning that feels new? It feels like we didn't know it before. Socrates suspected we forgot we knew it. Forsyth suspects that our Father graciously lets us "discover things" that he already has for us.
5/15/16 Sermon - More than Trying Harder
I resonated with the way Jenn described what we're ultimately yearning for. It's easier to describe what it's not than what it actually is. "It's more than trying harder."
Whatever it is, it definitely isn't just about trying harder.
All the wisdom and all the knowledge and truth and beauty were laid in a package at a man's doorstep. He wasn't sure where any of it had come from. He looked around and didn't see anybody. He shouted out, "OK, I'll try harder."
How do we respond when we've been shown the beauty of our families, the gift of life itself, the fragility of the present moment which is always passing away?
We don't just try harder. We pay attention.
Who is around you right now that could use an anonymous gift, an encouraging note, or a gift that can't be repaid?
I went home after the sermon and my 7 month old fell asleep in the car on the way home and Jessica was at a meeting. I decided to sit down and watch some of the 2011 film The Tree of Life. Everyone should watch this film one to thirteen or fourteen times in their life.
Jenn conveyed to us that "it's more than trying harder." As she put it, we do better to turn what we're doing over to God. I like the prayer she gave us: "Let my life not be about my life."
Obedience begins with prayer. Your response to God today is waiting for you in your prayer. "Let my life not be about my life today." "God, let your name be hallowed in my life today." Things will happen even as you speak those words to God. Images will come. People will pop into your head. You'll think of things and people and duties that you wish you hadn't. "Surely not that, Lord!" When that happens, pray again. "Lord, give me courage." Park the car by the side of the road. Make the call. Fire off the email.
Paul's life wasn't about his life: "For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ - with all boldness and without hindrance." (Acts 28:30-31)
Paul died in Rome while he was doing just this sort of thing. What is the thing you could spend two whole years doing, that you would do for another 40 years uninterrupted if need be if God allowed you the time?
All the wisdom and all the knowledge and truth and beauty were laid in a package at a woman's doorstep. She wasn't sure where any of it had come from. She looked around and didn't see anybody. She opened it.
Whatever it is, it definitely isn't just about trying harder.
All the wisdom and all the knowledge and truth and beauty were laid in a package at a man's doorstep. He wasn't sure where any of it had come from. He looked around and didn't see anybody. He shouted out, "OK, I'll try harder."
How do we respond when we've been shown the beauty of our families, the gift of life itself, the fragility of the present moment which is always passing away?
We don't just try harder. We pay attention.
Who is around you right now that could use an anonymous gift, an encouraging note, or a gift that can't be repaid?
I went home after the sermon and my 7 month old fell asleep in the car on the way home and Jessica was at a meeting. I decided to sit down and watch some of the 2011 film The Tree of Life. Everyone should watch this film one to thirteen or fourteen times in their life.
Jenn conveyed to us that "it's more than trying harder." As she put it, we do better to turn what we're doing over to God. I like the prayer she gave us: "Let my life not be about my life."
Obedience begins with prayer. Your response to God today is waiting for you in your prayer. "Let my life not be about my life today." "God, let your name be hallowed in my life today." Things will happen even as you speak those words to God. Images will come. People will pop into your head. You'll think of things and people and duties that you wish you hadn't. "Surely not that, Lord!" When that happens, pray again. "Lord, give me courage." Park the car by the side of the road. Make the call. Fire off the email.
Paul's life wasn't about his life: "For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ - with all boldness and without hindrance." (Acts 28:30-31)
Paul died in Rome while he was doing just this sort of thing. What is the thing you could spend two whole years doing, that you would do for another 40 years uninterrupted if need be if God allowed you the time?
All the wisdom and all the knowledge and truth and beauty were laid in a package at a woman's doorstep. She wasn't sure where any of it had come from. She looked around and didn't see anybody. She opened it.
A New Beginning for New Beginnings
After what looks to me like more than a year, I'm going to tend to this blog regularly again.
The blog will be much more exploratory than before. Some will consist of responses to reading. Others will be attempts to communicate about a certain subject in a way that could ultimately become curriculum. I will reflect regularly on sermons.
What will this mean for the actual posts? I expect that they'll be shorter and also more frequent. The Word of God and the Gospel are the constant guide. If any readers wish to see more regular devotions on just Scripture, I understand completely : - ). Email me at ckonker@mandarinpres.com and I'll get you signed up to get the MPC Bible-Reading Devotions which are posted twice a week from members of MPC. Those were so exciting to me as we got them started that they largely took up the energy that I put into this blog.
The blog will be much more exploratory than before. Some will consist of responses to reading. Others will be attempts to communicate about a certain subject in a way that could ultimately become curriculum. I will reflect regularly on sermons.
What will this mean for the actual posts? I expect that they'll be shorter and also more frequent. The Word of God and the Gospel are the constant guide. If any readers wish to see more regular devotions on just Scripture, I understand completely : - ). Email me at ckonker@mandarinpres.com and I'll get you signed up to get the MPC Bible-Reading Devotions which are posted twice a week from members of MPC. Those were so exciting to me as we got them started that they largely took up the energy that I put into this blog.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Reading the Bible in 2014 - Day 315: John 7-9 - The Truth Will Set You Free
I played tennis with Jessica this morning. Afterward, while she stretched, I grabbed a basketball from our car and went next door to shoot a few hoops while we were out. Other than me, the only ones on the court were a young mom and her two elementary aged boys. I was impressed by the little one especially. Though I had been content to shoot at the shorter hoops when I was his age, this little guy was feeling bold. He repeatedly heaved the ball from his chest at the big ten-foot goal. Several shots were so close to going in that he would gasp in frustrated exhilaration, and then - feeling confident - he would call out to his mom, who had her own ball, saying - "Mom, watch me!" So many years older than him, I was struck by the distant memory of that same yearning, and thought that if my mom were there at this court, I would be too embarrassed to call out to her. After all, how many 33-year olds have you heard call out, "Mom, watch me?" Still, does that feeling ever really die? There is a deep sense of knowing who we belong to, and wanting to make them proud. "Mom, watch me!"
This makes the conversation between Jesus and the festival-goers in chapter 8 truly heartrending. Jesus is attending one of the great 'family reunions' of the Jewish faith - the Festival of the Tabernacles, or the Festival of the Booths. It is a time of national thanksgiving, and a commemoration of the gift of the Promised Land. People have gathered in Jerusalem from all over Israel to celebrate God's promises to his people. On days of celebration, passions can run hot. Especially in any discussion about Abraham, the father of the chosen people. Jesus' words actually appear quite harsh upon our reading of 8:31-59 because these people aren't totally opposed to him. They would like to believe that Jesus is telling the truth. But there is a danger and spiritual blind-spot that comes with being this close to true faith, and yet hesitant to go all the way - "When a (person) is both orthodox and self-assertive, believing the Gospel but not believing in it - a very familiar spiritual state - he is not recognizing and making acquaintance with the truth. He is probably quite unconscious that he is in any bondage. He may preach the Gospel of redemption to others, and never know that he needs it himself. Pharisaism is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. The first of our needs is to know what our first need is - to be set free from bondage; but then we must accept and confess the fact that we are in bondage, and the more complete the bondage, the less we are aware of it." (William Temple, Readings in St. John's Gospel, p. 142)
Though these folks are sincerely convinced that they are children of God by heredity, Jesus presents to them - and to us - a call to repentance - "do you really know who you belong to?" Their growing opposition to Jesus illuminates the real distance between all humanity and God, maybe especially when we believe ourselves to be so close to God.
What comes so naturally to those children in the playground is the hardest thing to learn spiritually. It is so hard that we cannot learn it. We simply do not call out to God as his children. We must submit to an adoption process. Here, John 8 is right in key with Romans 8. We only become children of God through the ministry of the one true child of God - Jesus. Through his rightful Sonship, we become children of God, heirs to his throne, and are liberated from the slavery of our sin.
But if we take him seriously and take him at his word, we are left with a most comforting phrase - "If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." (8:36) Think of it this way: you can try to persuade yourself that you are a child of God. You can list all of your pleasant qualities. You can repeat the words "I am a child of God" as though they were a mantra. But life can change so quickly, and so do our moods and our tempers. The wrong phone call, the wrong sequence of events can easily make any of us perfectly unpersuasive - even to ourselves. But if Jesus speaks to you, he will tell you what freedom really means - freedom from wickedness, vanity, greed, and selfishness, and freedom for giving, loving, respecting, trusting, forgiving, renewing, and growing. We are destined to be kings and queens - real, live children of God. If he persuades you with his own righteousness and beauty, you will be set free.
Quite simply, none of us can set ourselves free. Only Jesus - the truth, the one on whom we depend for both our existence and our salvation - can set us free.
This makes the conversation between Jesus and the festival-goers in chapter 8 truly heartrending. Jesus is attending one of the great 'family reunions' of the Jewish faith - the Festival of the Tabernacles, or the Festival of the Booths. It is a time of national thanksgiving, and a commemoration of the gift of the Promised Land. People have gathered in Jerusalem from all over Israel to celebrate God's promises to his people. On days of celebration, passions can run hot. Especially in any discussion about Abraham, the father of the chosen people. Jesus' words actually appear quite harsh upon our reading of 8:31-59 because these people aren't totally opposed to him. They would like to believe that Jesus is telling the truth. But there is a danger and spiritual blind-spot that comes with being this close to true faith, and yet hesitant to go all the way - "When a (person) is both orthodox and self-assertive, believing the Gospel but not believing in it - a very familiar spiritual state - he is not recognizing and making acquaintance with the truth. He is probably quite unconscious that he is in any bondage. He may preach the Gospel of redemption to others, and never know that he needs it himself. Pharisaism is not an exclusively Jewish phenomenon. The first of our needs is to know what our first need is - to be set free from bondage; but then we must accept and confess the fact that we are in bondage, and the more complete the bondage, the less we are aware of it." (William Temple, Readings in St. John's Gospel, p. 142)
Though these folks are sincerely convinced that they are children of God by heredity, Jesus presents to them - and to us - a call to repentance - "do you really know who you belong to?" Their growing opposition to Jesus illuminates the real distance between all humanity and God, maybe especially when we believe ourselves to be so close to God.
What comes so naturally to those children in the playground is the hardest thing to learn spiritually. It is so hard that we cannot learn it. We simply do not call out to God as his children. We must submit to an adoption process. Here, John 8 is right in key with Romans 8. We only become children of God through the ministry of the one true child of God - Jesus. Through his rightful Sonship, we become children of God, heirs to his throne, and are liberated from the slavery of our sin.
But if we take him seriously and take him at his word, we are left with a most comforting phrase - "If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." (8:36) Think of it this way: you can try to persuade yourself that you are a child of God. You can list all of your pleasant qualities. You can repeat the words "I am a child of God" as though they were a mantra. But life can change so quickly, and so do our moods and our tempers. The wrong phone call, the wrong sequence of events can easily make any of us perfectly unpersuasive - even to ourselves. But if Jesus speaks to you, he will tell you what freedom really means - freedom from wickedness, vanity, greed, and selfishness, and freedom for giving, loving, respecting, trusting, forgiving, renewing, and growing. We are destined to be kings and queens - real, live children of God. If he persuades you with his own righteousness and beauty, you will be set free.
Quite simply, none of us can set ourselves free. Only Jesus - the truth, the one on whom we depend for both our existence and our salvation - can set us free.
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