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Realizing the presence, promise, and power of the Kingdom of God.
The Week

The Week Nov. 2-9, 2014

Good and evil, beauty and truth, worldview musings

Vision
Vision of Reality
Marilynne Robinson explains how her encounter with Jonathan Edwards liberated her from the stifling determinisms of Modernity into a world fraught with mystery, wonder, beauty, love, and hope (“Jonathan Edwards in a New Light,” Humanities, November/December 2014). From Edwards she learned the majesty and grace of God, Who arbitrarily (according to His own secret will) continues the creation, creating reality anew from moment to moment, filling it with goodness, beauty, and truth: “Iwas moved and instructed precisely by the vast theater Edwards’s vision proposes for complexity and uncertainty, for a universe that is orderly without being mechanical, that is open to and participates in possibility, indeterminacy, and even providence. It taught me to think in terms that finally did some justice to the complexity of things.” She explains that, for Edwards, questions of reality were always enmeshed in aesthetics and, consequently, morality, so that it is impossible to talk about the one without talking about the other, and impossible to discuss any of these apart from a saving relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Conversion to Christ is the means of escape from the pseudo-reality of original sin into the real world as God conceived, created, sustains, redeemed, and is renewing it. This brief essay – in a government publication, no less – offers a concise statement of the difference being a believer makes in rightly understanding the world, and puts the thought of Edwards into a more profound and complete light. 

http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/novemberdecember/feature/jonathan-edwards-in-new-light-remembered-preaching-fire-and

Andy Crouch: The Posterity Gospel
In his book, Playing God, Andy Crouch argues the importance of institutions for helping to ensure the blessings of God for future generations. Christian faith is future-oriented, and its vision of the future must be one of increasing growth and flourishing: “The only biblical prosperity gospel is a posterity gospel—the promise that genera­tion after generation will know the goodness of God through the properly stewarded abundance of God’s world.” Only healthy institutions can ensure this – families, churches, schools, governments, markets and economies, etc. Thus the Christian vision must include a vision for such institutions and the commitment, in the present, to work for them. This will require working to reform those institutions which have become corrupt or which are pursuing wrong vision. Crouch rightly observes, “One of the great tragedies of the church in America is how many of our most creative leaders poured their energies into creating forms of church life that served just a single generation. Even when these efforts were built around something larger than a single personality, they were doomed to seem dated and ‘irrelevant’ even to the children of their founders. Perhaps a new generation of leaders will arise who want to build for posterity, to plant seeds that will take generations to bear fruit, to nurture forms of culture that will be seen as blessings by our children’s children. If we are serious about flourishing, across space and through time, we will be serious about institutions.”

The Good Society
John Gray exposes as false and naive the Western liberal belief that human progress can overcome evil because evil is a function of faulty or corrupt institutions (John Gray, “The Truth about Evil,” The Guardian, October 21, 2014). While he rejects the Christian and Biblical view of evil, he endorses that view in its teaching that evil is a condition inherent in the human psyche and therefore will always be with us. Evil can not be entirely overcome in this life, not even in the greatest of saints. Yet faith, with God and Christ as its object, the Holy Spirit as its operative power, and the Scriptures as its foundation, can overcome evil with good, if only to a certain extent or even temporarily, at least in this life (my view, not Gray’s). Gray is certainly correct in denying the progressive and evolutionary view of human progress, dependent upon human government and subordinate institutions. Western governments, Gray explains, “need a narrative of continuing advance if they are to preserve their sense of being able to act meaningfully in the world” and “so they are driven again and again to re-enact their past failures.” “Aiming to exorcise evil from the modern mind, secular liberals have ended up constructing another version of demonology, in which anything that stands out against what is believed to be the rational course of human development is anathematised.” All such views – indeed, all views of the good society – are acts of faith, and, John Gray suggests, when they can be shown to be bad faith, they should be rejected. He is correct. But Christians cannot speak meaningfully into this or any social or cultural situation from a platform of faith compromised and mixed with secular values and beliefs. We need a soundly Biblical basis for our faith and our vision of the good society. And that vision will include the ongoing reality of evil together with the continuous struggle of the redeemed to overcome it, beginning in themselves, with good (Rom. 12.21).

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/21/-sp-the-truth-about-evil-john-gray

A Warning to My Readers

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man as crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.  

Wendell Berry, A Part (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1980)

Disciplines
Art, Music, and Transcendence
In his article, “Going to the chapel” (Aeon, 31 October 2014), Nathan Dunne offers a meditation on the connections between modern art, music, political activism, and the longing for transcendence. He explores the way paintings by Mark Rothko and music by Paul Simon express and have affected cultural and political life. He suggests, “Perhaps there is something inherently musical in the experience of abstract art”, then cites works of Kandinsky and Mondrian in support of this idea. His experience in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, including a bizarre encounter with a homeless man, provoked his meditation, which ends with this brief reflection: “[The Chapel and the] weight of its ambition and purpose did not inspire transcendence but the longing for transcendence...” Here again is evidence of the power of art, in all its forms. Human beings are aesthetic creatures, and this part of our nature resides within all facets of our souls. Find a way to strum a person's aesthetic chords, and you discover a portal into his soul. Christians ignore or minimize the arts – including secular art in all its forms – to the detriment, both of our own experience of the Kingdom, and of our ability to lead others into it.

http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/what-music-can-you-hear-in-rothkos-art/?utm_source=Aeon+newsletter&utm_campaign=2933fca749-Daily_Newsletter_31_October_201410_31_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-2933fca749-68631581

Elections
Susie and I introduced ourselves to the election official presiding at the table where the sign, “L-Q”, indicated we should report for our civic duty. The official looked through her list of registered voters and inquired, “19 Tyler Drive?” Then she handed us ballots and gave instructions concerning how to fill them out. She did not request any proof of identity, so I suppose we could have been any of a number of local people who possessed the list of registered voters – and had been calling us daily to remind us to vote (no fear of voter fraud here in liberal Vermont, no sir). As is now clear, the Republicans have gained control of the Senate, putting Congress into one-party mode and making the President a lame duck. Many across the land are enthusiastic about this outcome. I have observed this shifting of political power to the “conservative” end of the spectrum now three times in my life, for two of which I contributed my lot. The country, despite its predictable lurching from one end to the other of the political spectrum, continues to flee the knowledge of God and the rule of King Jesus, following a pattern roughly outlined in Romans 1.18-32. Politics is powerless to staunch the flow of spiritual vitality from the nation's soul. We may succeed against the ebola virus, but the virus of sin has us all in its grippe, and the condition worsens year by year. The discipline needed to restore spiritual and moral health to our nation is not politics but prayer, prayer and proclamation. So far, the citizens of God's Kingdom have chosen not to exercise this option, supposing, I suppose, that political change will allow us to maintain our cherished and comfortable status quo. But the status quo is hardly a vision becoming the followers of Christ. And perpetuating the status quo indefinitely into the future takes little creative effort, and almost no faith. But it may be that almost no faith and little creative effort are as much as the Christian community of our day can muster?

Writing
Writer’s block is a condition common to many wordsmiths. Gradually, or perhaps suddenly, your ideas dry up, the joy of writing disappears, and the purpose for crafting words and sentences at all melts into meaninglessness. You simply have nothing to say and no interest in saying it. Sven Birkerts relates a recent bout with writer’s block in a November 4 post at Aeon (“The unearned gift”). This, Birkerts explains, is every writer’s greatest fear – that a gift freely given has been suddenly recalled, without explanation or instruction for how to reclaim it. These are seasons that can lead writers to panic. What if this is the end? Birkerts recounts his experience of being suddenly stirred to write by tricking his mind into a mode of creativity which prepared him to respond to a small stimulus, reigniting his attention, passion, and “unearned gift.” He explains that, to him, writing is an unearned gift, “a kind of grace, a mysterious bestowal, bestower unknown.” And, of course, he is exactly correct. Like all work – indeed, all of life – the vocation of writing bears witness to the creativity, kindness, mercy, love, power, and goodness of God, the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Birkerts’ sense of this, that something so filled with meaning and delight, should be his, all unearned from some “bestower unknown”, is evidence of the image of God in him. We are never very far from the wooing and striving of God. 

Culture
Significant achievements in culture are not the result of innovation, but of imitation and accretion. So argues Kat McGowan in “Brilliant impersonators” (Aeon, 6 November 2014). “To be human is to copy”, she explains. Findings from a wide range of fields show that “imitation allows good ideas to spread quickly and efficiently. By distributing good ideas among many brains, copying preserves them for future generations, allowing them to accumulate.” She concludes, “The mighty machine of cultural innovation turns out to be powered by an army of small minds, thinking unoriginal thoughts. It's time to celebrate their mediocrity.” Small minds of the world, unite! And copy! 

http://aeon.co/magazine/science/imitation-is-what-makes-us-human-and-creativ/?utm_source=Aeon+newsletter&utm_campaign=e4d529dca3-Daily_Newsletter_06_November_201411_6_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-e4d529dca3-68631581

Outcomes
Emotional Health
Love for God and neighbors, expressed in words and deeds, is a function of true understanding aided by proper affections and a good conscience (1 Tim. 1.5). But we seldom educate people in anything other than knowledge and practice (“how-to”). Writing in the Fall 2014 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review, Adam C. Pelser argues for a stronger effort in the direction of emotions training on the part of Christian educators (“Irrigating Deserts: Thinking with C. S. Lewis about Educating for Emotional Formation”). He takes as his starting point and platform C. S. Lewis’ discussion of emotions in The Abolition of Man. We must neither deny nor ignore the role of emotion in human life. The soul – heart, mind, and conscience – is all of a piece, and all facets must be healthy and interacting for people to act according to true moral principles. He offers some helpful suggestions, but a great deal of work remains in understanding and shaping the affections on the part of Christian educators.

Envoi
The Lash, the Thorns, the Nails

On every hand, each day, all day, I see
them. They precipitate within my mind,
well up like burning lava through some vent
or fissure in my heart, or sprawl across
my path, not well disguised, a trap or snare
or pit. I know each one for what it is
and what it does - the lash, the thorns, the nails.
I see the torn flesh and the battered brow.
I put my finger in the nail prints, and
remember it was I who flayed Him, I
who pressed that crown down rudely, cruelly, till
the skin gave way to crimson geysers – I
who drove those nails through feet that sought me, hands
that held and washed me. I and you and all
of us together taunted, tortured, and
entombed Him – savages! And yet, such scenes
before me notwithstanding – O, the shame! –
ensnared by sin, in burning anger, or
by wicked, stupid thoughts betrayed, I grip
that lash, those thorns, those nails, and add more wounds
and senseless scars upon His body, Who
alone forgives and can my soul renew.

T. M. Moore

T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife, Susie, make their home in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
Books by T. M. Moore

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