Fear or Something More

I overheard a conversation between management a few weeks ago that went something like this: 

“Who is doing boxes?”

“Joe Shmo is on box crew.  He's right over there.”

After the big boss glances over, he comments right back, “It doesn't look like he's working very hard.”

With a smile, the low-level supervisor replies, “Do we have any employees that work hard?  We just let the seasonal employees go!” he said almost laughing.

Now to anyone that works with me this is not terribly surprising.  The implication is that when one becomes a regular worker (and not a new or seasonal employee) there is little reason to work at the highest level.  It's like a teacher becoming tenured.  Fear makes a person work hard.  Less fear, less motivation.  No fear, no motivation.

Now I want us to step back from the employment context and think about how this principle is actually deeply saturated in almost every context of our culture –actually, more accurately, our global context.  Lets take geo-politics.  Why should Iran or North Korea listen to the UN's demands?  Answer: sanctions.  Fear of economic paralysis.  Why did America pull back from Vietnam?  Mounting casualties began to outweigh political utility.  Fear, this fear, turned the tide of public sentiment and the political powers that be.

Fear is also the machine behind most ethical impulses.  Why not sleep around on your spouse?  Well, it might destroy your marriage, your family, your career, your reputation, etc.  Fear of massive relational disintegration.  Why do I go to the dentist?  Or the gym?  Why do I obey my father or my 1st grade teacher, or obey law enforcement?  Why do I strive for good grades in school?  Why do I pay my bills on time or save money for a rainy day?  Fear.  Its the perennial motivator.

Actually an interesting side note on the ethics aspect.  I have witnessed many minor accidents and fender-benders over the years in my parking lot.  So what motivates a person to take responsibility for his actions?  Well, sadly, I have never once seen someone accidentally damage a parked car and take responsibility for it simply because it was the right thing to do.  But I have witnessed at least a dozen accidents where a parked car was damaged, and the person responsible was ready to scoot away quickly until they were told they need to leave a note.  I had one person shrug off my suggestion, until I told him we have a picture of his license plate and it will probably be worse if it becomes a hit-and-run.  Fear.  It's the great (and sometimes only) motivator.

Is this how it should be?  Parenting gives us one of the best examples of how fear is properly interwoven into motivation.  As a parent you want your young child to share, not because they are afraid of your displeasure, but ultimately because they will actually enjoy sharing and will want others to share with them.  So what do parents typically do?  Do they say: “Okay little Johnny, only share when you actually enjoy it”...?  (...since that's what I ultimately want for you).  No, at least the good parents don't.  Parents tell them they must share.  And as they begin to share, simply because they must (fear), then typically they will start to see its value down the road.  Fear brings boundaries to our lives.  Ideally, however, we were meant to live and enjoy life without needing the boundaries –without fear.  We're supposed to do the right thing, because its the right thing.  We're supposed to be faithful to our spouses, because we love them.  We're supposed to go to the dentist or the gym because there is something intrinsically valuable about health. 

But, of course, we don't live in an ideal world.  Fear is a necessity –because of our depravity.  We need boundaries because we are so prone to go beyond them.  But the big question I want to ask is: what happens when you live within the boundaries simply because you love it and enjoy it?  What happens when you work your tail off at work, when you have no other reason to?  What happens when your honesty on your taxes has nothing to do with getting audited?  What happens when you love purity because its beautiful, not because God might be watching?  Well, what happens is people start asking questions.  A world engulfed in an ocean of fear, gets confused when others march to another beat.  You become an anomaly that needs to be explained. 

So now the question is, what beat do you march to?

Fairy Tales and Freedom

George MacDonald writes, in one of his short stories called The Castle, A Parable, some of the most profound words on freedom.  He tells about a previously rebellious young boy whose new perspective on life has actually given him a new perspective in his previous love for astronomy and more importantly a new perspective on freedom:

George MacDonald

“But now he was diligent from morning till night in the study of the laws of the truth that has to do with stars; and when the curtain of the sun-light was about to rise from before the heavenly worlds which it had hidden all day long, he might be seen preparing his instruments with that solemn countenance with which it becometh one to look into the mysterious harmonies of Nature.  Now he learned what law and order and truth are, what consent and harmony mean; how the individual may find his own end in a higher end, where law and freedom mean the same thing, and the purest certainty exists without the slightest constraint.  Thus he stood on the earth and looked to the heavens.”

His brothers and sisters, coming out of their collective rebellion, learned the same paradoxical freedom:

“By degrees, everything fell into the regularity of subordination.  With the subordination came increase of freedom.”

Our culture does not even have a category for this type of amazing freedom.  Isn't subordination supposed to be the opposite of freedom!  Not for MacDonald.  And not for the classic stream of thought prior to 18th century.  And not for me.

Creed, Code and Communion

J.I. Packer wrote in 1987:

“The late W.H. Griffith Thomas entitled one of his books Christianity is Christ.  He was right; so it is.  To describe Christianity as a creed plus a code would be more usual, but would not go so deep.  That Christianity involves both a creed and a code is a truth that none should query.  Where basic beliefs about Jesus are denied and Christian behavior is not practiced, Christianity does not exist, whatever may be claimed to the contrary.

But Thomas's point was that you can know the creed and embrace the code and still be a stranger to Christianity.  Martin Luther, George Whitefield and John Wesley, to name but three, had to learn that through humbling experiences; so did I; and so have many more.  For the essence of Christianity is neither beliefs nor behavior patterns; it is the communion here and now with Christianity's living founder, the mediator, Jesus Christ.” (The J.I. Packer Collection, 184)

I'm on that list.

Proper God-talk

J.I. Packer outlines the traditional reformed position of how one should view theological language concerning God:

“Christians regard God as free from the limits that bind creatures like ourselves, who bear God's image while not existing on his level, and Christian language, following biblical precedent, shakes free from ordinary limits in a way that reflects this fact...  Christian speech verbalizes the apprehended mystery of God by using a distinctive non-representational ‘picture-language’... The doctrine of analogy is the time-harboured account, going back to Aquinas, of how ordinary language is used to speak intelligibly of a God who is partly like us (because we bear his image) and partly unlike us (because he is the infinite Creator while we are finite creatures).” (The J.I. Packer Collection, 104)

Is Christian speech concerning God really non-representational picture-language?

The bible says “God is love,” in 1 John 4:8.  Does our finite language and categories (like “love”) accurately represent God?  Only if we take it analogically or as picture-language says Packer.  Our language is a model of the true divine quality, not a direct representation of it.  Does it follow that the bible is a non-representational model?  For Packer and the traditional stream of classic and reformed theology, yes.

I want to push back.  What is an analogy?  What is a model?  Jesus says, “I am the vine you are the branches.”  How am I “a branch” Jesus?  Am I a branch because I have chloroplast like every other plant?  Am I a branch because most branches are brown and my skin is brown?  The answer of course is that I am a branch because of the relational matrix branches find themselves within –in reference to the vine and the fruit.  I am a branch because fruit depends on me and I depend on the vine.  Though many qualities are different (between me and branches), at least one is the same.  This is how analogies work.  Something is like another because there is one or more shared qualities.

So back to Packer.  Reducing God-talk to non-representational analogies does not get him where I think he wants to land.  He wants to land in a linguistic world where direct representation concerning God is disallowed.  This is what analogies and picture-language do for him.  And so for him and many others, this secures God's infinite transcendence.  But even an analogy requires at least one matching quality for it to function!  It requires representation at its core, like every fragment of language.  If this is right, there is actually no such thing as “non-representational analogies.”

My second worry is theological, not just linguistic.  Evangelicals believe the bible is the word of God.  It is a collection of words in human language that represent God accurately.  Packer believes this, but he (and the tradition of the reformers) would slightly qualify this.  It is a collection of words in human language that model/picture/analogize God accurately.  Why this qualification?  Because they say it is presumptuous and impious to suppose that limited and finite human language can truly and definitively represent an infinite God.  But the problem for this position, it seems to me, is that God chose human language be the means for how we are to understand him.  It falls in the same way the position which says God becoming human is too presumptuous and impious.  The position which says finite human existence is too limiting for an infinite God.  But of course, God can choose (and freely did choose!) to become man for us and for us to understand Him climatically in this limited capacity.  In the same way, God chose human language to be his definitive word to us.   Maybe the impiety is actually qualifying down God's self revelation so it squares better with our (perhaps semi-platonic) views about God's transcendence.  Perhaps its presumptuous to suppose that God stooping to our linguistic level only gives us “the word of God” with an asterisk.

Nietzsche vs. Jesus Christ

A tribute to the late Dallas Willard, a long-time distinguished Professor of Philosophy at USC.  He was able to bring truth to college students and the most skeptical among our generation like very few could.  This is a lecture titled “Nietzsche v. Jesus” at Stanford University followed by a very interesting Q&A:

Meaningless Beauty

Browsing through an art gallery (I know its hard to believe) with my brother-in-law on Saturday, I came across this quote by an artist, Michael Flohr:  “I want to show that a painting doesn't have to be challenging.  It can just be something that pleases your eye.  It doesn't have to have a meaning.  You don't have to dissect it. Enjoy its beauty and what it brings to you.”

I get his heart here.  Many are hyper-analytical and look for deep paradoxical meaning behind every work of art.  “What does this aspect mean?  What did you mean by using this color?”  Flohr is asking people to take deep breath, step back, and just soak it in.  I love that.

Michael Flohr

But instead of analyzing his art (of which I am the least qualified) I want to think about his statement.  It stirred in me throughout the day.  Can something truly beautiful, be meaningless at the same time?  That is an interesting question.  By meaningless he isn't saying it cannot speak to you profoundly.  By meaningless he means there is not an objectively intended meaning.  So his answer to the question will have to be: Yes, there is ‘meaningless’ beauty because in this sense we understand beauty to simply be a subjective experience.  But if you are inclined to think that beauty is some objective reality of the actual painting, meaningless beauty is a category mistake. 

I guess I find myself disappointed by an artist ready to say yes to this question.  Artists that relegate beauty to the whims of perception... are like judges who relegate justice to any moral whims of a plaintiff.  They are like doctors who relegate health to whatever his patient perceives health to be.  They are like trial witnesses who relegate truth –which they swear to tell– to his own subjective preferences.  This is class A, perennial, postmodernism.  It is a book with no object.  A story with no theme.  This is a world incredulous toward meta-narratives (as Lyotard would say), nauseated if asked to discuss ‘real’ meaning. 

If this is all justice or health or truth really amount to, whats the point of any of them?  And if this is all beauty really amounts to, Mr. Flohr, how is art anything more than a sub-genre of the entertainment industry?  –something created to amuse the masses, like a roller coaster.  It is not something created for life-shaping profundity like, well, a work of art.

The Song of the Servant

“You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3).

Israel is the servant of the Lord.  Israel is the Lord's chosen representative through whom the rest of the world will know and glorify God.  She is that beautiful beacon to the world through whom God's renown is intended to be spread.  Again, the vocation of Israel as originally given to Abraham is clearly alluded to... “through your descendents (Israel) all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”

But then something peculiar happens two verses later.  Who is “the servant” now?  “And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel: I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  This servant is more than the nation of Israel.  This servant is doing something to Israel!  We see more fully three chapters later that not only is this servant an individual, but we see how he will bring back Israel.  Through suffering.  But that's moving too far ahead.  The question now is, why does Isaiah mix his terms?  Why call him the servant of the Lord when he just got done calling Israel the Lord's servant?

It's because there is a typological connection.  This servant, this individual, is the embodiment of Israel.  He takes on Israel's vocation.  “To be a light for the nations, to bring salvation to the end of the earth” (49:6).  He suffers punishment of sin, like Israel (Is 52:13-53:12, cf. Is 40:2)  And after receiving punishment, he will be restored and prosper, like Israel (Is 49:10-11, cf. Is 44:1-5).  And most importantly, he becomes the beacon for the world to see the redemption of God.  The great promise of global redemption in Abraham, though unfulfilled by human will-power in law-based Israel, became stunningly fulfilled only by divine initiative.  “The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.  He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation...” (Is 59:15-16).  Absolutely majestic –in more than just the literary sense.