A few moments after my son Nathaniel's birth, I sat next to him in the
intensive care unit alone. The
technological contraptions going in and around him weighed more than his meager
four pounds. Yet his eyes were wide open
to a whole new world –a world which began with a brown and bearded man
whispering nonsense to him behind tempered glass =) I imagined his future and what it could
possibly entail. So many
possibilities. Some seemed hopeful, some
seemed dreadful.
The British empiricist John Locke believes that humans beings start out as a tabula rasa, a blank slate. Experience writes the language of all thought and concepts onto the mind. It means that in this moment Nathaniel's mind is not just immature and undeveloped; it is literally blank and bare and thus has within it endless possibilities. Gottfried Leibniz disagrees. Instead of a blank slate, Leibniz says a better image is an unformed block of marble. A raw block with its own crevices, cleavages, and veins. And of course in order for an artist to sculpt and form the marble he has to creatively work with (and around) these veins and cleavages. So for Leibniz, it means that in this moment Nathaniel’s mind is just beginning to be chiseled and shaped. The possibilities are wide open, but they are not the same for every block of marble. So it is with us, says Leibniz. So then what is going to shape and chisel my son over his 60+ years? What will his final shape ultimately turn out to be? And if Leibniz is right, what cleavages and crevices are already a part of him now?
A Christian worldview says (similar to Leibniz) we are born with an innate nature –a rebellious one. We not only have cracks and crevices that have pre-shaped us, but our cleavage is so deep that its contours actually tend toward self-destruction. This was the dreadful part of my imaginings. I felt an instantaneous desperation to pray for my son, like my father once felt for me. No matter how much or how little I might chisel, his ultimate shape is outside my control.
If this is the world Nathaniel is born into, he will need more than many skilled hands to shape him. He needs to be a “rock that is cut, but not by human hands.” He needs cuts that reform the actual cleavages… not just go around them.
This is my prayer for my son.
The British empiricist John Locke believes that humans beings start out as a tabula rasa, a blank slate. Experience writes the language of all thought and concepts onto the mind. It means that in this moment Nathaniel's mind is not just immature and undeveloped; it is literally blank and bare and thus has within it endless possibilities. Gottfried Leibniz disagrees. Instead of a blank slate, Leibniz says a better image is an unformed block of marble. A raw block with its own crevices, cleavages, and veins. And of course in order for an artist to sculpt and form the marble he has to creatively work with (and around) these veins and cleavages. So for Leibniz, it means that in this moment Nathaniel’s mind is just beginning to be chiseled and shaped. The possibilities are wide open, but they are not the same for every block of marble. So it is with us, says Leibniz. So then what is going to shape and chisel my son over his 60+ years? What will his final shape ultimately turn out to be? And if Leibniz is right, what cleavages and crevices are already a part of him now?
A Christian worldview says (similar to Leibniz) we are born with an innate nature –a rebellious one. We not only have cracks and crevices that have pre-shaped us, but our cleavage is so deep that its contours actually tend toward self-destruction. This was the dreadful part of my imaginings. I felt an instantaneous desperation to pray for my son, like my father once felt for me. No matter how much or how little I might chisel, his ultimate shape is outside my control.
If this is the world Nathaniel is born into, he will need more than many skilled hands to shape him. He needs to be a “rock that is cut, but not by human hands.” He needs cuts that reform the actual cleavages… not just go around them.
This is my prayer for my son.
No comments:
Post a Comment