Resurrection

Luke 24:5b

Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

In one of his last works, "A Grief Observed", C. S. Lewis takes us real-time through his grief over the death of his wife Joy, whom he anonymously refers to as "H". Knowing that Lewis is a profound Christian apologist makes the reading all the more difficult. Just as Christ cried out on the cross, "My God, why have you forsaken me?", so Lewis spends the first half of the book walking through Hell in utter despair.

It was St. Augustine who said, "Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." One reads the bitterness Lewis records and wonders. It is the nature of being human that we can savor our joy of life while holding the bitter end in our mind like a bomb in a closet. Jesus tells us that we should let today's troubles be sufficient for today, but we cannot entirely look away from the forecast of tomorrow's weather. God created us with a heart for eternity and with a knowledge of mortality; it is what differentiates us from His other creatures. Do not worry? How?

In a previous post, I wrote:

Smoker's smoke because they delude themselves into believing that they will avoid cancer. Overweight people continue to eat or not exercise because they think that they might avoid heart disease. Or maybe the reason is even more disturbing. Maybe human beings are fatalistic at the core. We recognize that we have three scores and ten (give or take a few years) so why does it matter?

Human beings are not only fatalistic, they are purposefully self deluded. We ignore the broken trestle because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to simply enjoy the ride. This is why secularists hate Christians, because they don't want to be reminded of the approaching train wreck. It is so much simpler and so much more practical to bracket our lives between our personal Alpha and Omega.

Most people are pragmatic. They will attempt to make the most whatever time they have, regardless of the quantity or quality. Almost everyone would do almost anything to extend that time. We agree with St. Augustine implicitly, almost without thinking, and only the most morose or depressed person would think otherwise. Of course it is better to savor even a few moments of delight or joy, rather than never experience at all.

Long ago I came up with an insipid mathematical way of measuring the quality of life. If we could somehow plot satisfaction versus time, then the total quality of life could be measured by integrating the area under the satisfaction curve. In other words, a short but highly satisfying life has the same quality as a long but modestly satisfying life. This seems ridiculous when one puts it into words, but it is our calculus nevertheless. We make our life decisions based on this calculus. We completely ignore the "treasure in the field" when it comes to the practicalities of maximizing the quality of life.

So what does this have to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Well, the most obvious answer is that the area under the curve is infinite for those who are resurrected. If we live forever, then the quality of our life is infinite as well. I forgot to mention that suffering counts as negative satisfaction, so the area under the curve could be negative, or in the case of Hell, infinitely negative.

Yes it sounds stupid, but this is how we think. Lewis' journal of grief is an account of his personal death and resurrection. He descends into the Hell of doubt, despair, confusion and blinding misery. He finds the door to God locked tight. He questions God's motivations and bitterly ponders God's sovereignty. Then, as if born again, he awakens to find that God did not abandon him, and that life, memory, joy, and peace remain beyond death. His demeanor changes so dramatically that one wonders if this is the same author. From Joseph to Job to Jesus, the promise of the Resurrection renders our calculus useless.

My own spiritual life is a seemingly neverending cycle of death and resurrection. When the darkness falls, all hope and faith diminish until there is nothing left except a single point of light, but the light never fails and I rise again because God pulls me out of the pit. I want to believe that it is nothing more than psychochemical, but I know better. I would also like to wear it like a badge, but it feels more like a curse. It is the Valley of the Shadow, the anticipation of the end. As the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes 1:17

And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.

Long ago two women went to visit a grave, to give honor to a pile of dead flesh and bones. Their lives were probably hard in a hard land, oppressed by tyranny, holding out for a mythical King to come and free their people. Then a man came who was more than a man, and He told them about how God had come to live among them, and that the Kingdom of Heaven was here and now, and their lives were filled with joy they had never known.

Then He was murdered and all was lost, and maybe it would have been better if He had never come.

But He came back.

Our Greatest Export

The United States has long carried a trade deficit. Assuming that the definition still holds, a trade deficit means that we import more than we export. So why haven't we gone broke already? We must be accumulating wealth through some other means. This should be obvious, since so much of our wealth accumululates in investment and real property. For example, my trade deficit at home has been negative for as long as I can remember, but my family has more wealth today than we did 20 years ago. Only farmers have a "trade surplus".

Unfortunately, our biggest export cannot be measured in dollars, and it has by far the greatest influence on our reputation in the world as well as our national security. We export ideas. We import them as well, but with characteristic Yankee ingenuity, we learn how to replicate these ideas and build on them, then spew them back at the world one hundred fold. The poisonous ideas which emerged from the collapse of the Christian church in Europe have captured our intelligentsia at all levels. We now teach the world, and what do we teach? The United States is the root of all evil. There is no God. Man is not a creation, but an evolving system, perfectible and designable. Capitalism is evil, socialism is Heaven on Earth.

America is suffering from an autoimmune disease. Our great institutions of thought have turned inward to destroy America and everything it represents. Nothing escapes the non-stop worldwide self critique. From Hollywood to Harvard, on every major television network, in every major newspaper, the drumbeat continues and the world consumes the vomit. We barely even see it anymore. It has become a part of our intellectual landscape, briars and weeds and ugliness, cynicism and skepticism, anti-establishment, anti-faith, anti-capitalist, anti-everything. America sucks.

Is it any wonder that we stand almost alone in the world? If anything, it is a backhanded compliment to our true greatness as a nation that the United Nations, residing on our free soil, opposes virtually everything we do and everything we represent, for it too is one of OUR institutions. America is like a doctor who decides to operate on himself but fails to realize that self-administered anesthesia may well be terminal.

Our intelligentsia is dominated by the Left: the faculties of our liberal arts universities, the press, most state and local governments as well as the federal government, our law schools, our courts, our mainstream churches. Those institutions dominated by the Right are mostly part of the private sector: business, engineering, finance, and most of the middle and working classes. In other words, our leaders in the world of ideas are leftists.

Because our schools have worldwide recognition, we have become the world's teaching center for anti-Americanism. The American liberal arts institutions are of one mind with their European counterparts. They exercise contrarianism for its own sake. To be the opposition is fulfilling in itself. Knowing that they are secure behind a wall of nuclear defense, they are free attack the wall and cheer on the barbarians on the other side. Knowing that Western democracies are safe places to grouse without retribution, they relentlessly criticize the institutions which protect them and take sides with totalitarian monsters.

Meanwhile, middle America continues to shop at Walmart and watch insipid television, seemingly oblivious to the intellectual warfare. We feel vaguely manipulated by big business, big government, big media, and big academia. We know that we have become the policeman of the world, and we know that we are hated, but we just want to live our lives. Why can't we all just get along? Maybe if we stopped bullying other nations. Maybe if we weren't so rich. Maybe if we weren't so arrogant. Maybe if we didn't have all those ugly nuclear warheads, and nasty evil jets and tanks and other destructive stuff. Maybe we could just replace our flag with a big smiley face and everyone would love us. Where do we get these vague impressions, these implicit ideas, this dangerous naivete?

We "sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." We can no longer afford this self-immolation, because we don't live in a bubble. The little tyrants of the world cannot defeat the giant, unless the giant defeats himself.

Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt

Romans 1:19-21

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

This passage and others like it form the Christian apologist's argument against honest intellectual doubt. It is an ad hominem attack on the doubter because it asserts that the doubter's argument is not honest, but rather is driven purely by a desire to disobey God.

I know that there are rational reasons to believe in Jesus Christ, and their are rational reasons to doubt the existence of God. I don't need to undermine the arguer to win (or lose) the argument. It is a cheap shot either way.

Paul is saying that sinners don't want to believe in God because then they have to confront their own misbehavior and the consequences thereof. This is often the case, but is it the only reason for unbelief? It may well be the other way around. Maybe people are more likely to sin because they do not believe. This would seem to be common sense, and Paul even says this in 1 Corinthians 15:32

If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

It is no coincidence that Christianity is in decline in the post industrial world. The "cheap shot" would be to blame it on the increasing permissiveness of society, moral decay, the culture of death (abortion and euthanasia), drugs, and multiculturalism. But, is it possible that these are symptoms rather than causes? Is our society any more decadent than the Roman Empire? Yet, Christianity grew from the cesspool of a dying antiquity, consumed by narcissism and corruption no less prevalent than in our time.

In Matthew 13:44-46, Jesus says,

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

The heart of doubt, the real shadow of doubt, lies in those precious words, for the converse is also true. The merchant who finds the pearl, but does not fully believe the value of the pearl, may go and buy other less expensive pearls. If he believed in the value of the pearl, what would he not sell to have it? Most people recognize the potential value of the pearl, but they aren't going to pay the price because they aren't quite sure. Some of those other less expensive jewels might be OK.

We live in two worlds. We want to follow Christ, but we also want the pleasures of this life. We see our faith as a matter of degree, not as a binary choice. We recognize our own fear of death when cancer or war or murder or some other shade crosses our happy-go-lucky path through life, but if death means jumping from the frying pan into cool water, then why do we tremble?

In my personal faith journey, I have met no one who doesn't make the same compromise between faith and living in a secular world. No one. Christians don't want to talk about it. It is like a disease that you catch if you talk about it, so it is best to keep your mouth shut. All the while our mainstream churches are dying because they have lost the ability to be honest with themselves. They are slowly changing into social service organizations while their hierarchies obsess over leftist agendas.

No sin is worth the agony of doubt. The sickening darkness of life without meaning cannot be partied away. The vast majority of people long for meaning in their lives. They long for certainty and security. They long for life above all other things, for those they love and for themselves. Doubt is the threat of losing all, and Satan is the author. So does the unbeliever choose to deny the existence of God in order to sanction a libertine life?

In the parable of the merchant and the pearl, Jesus summarizes our real life dilemma. It is true that there are many people who will pass over the pearl because they don't want to pay the price. If they purchase the pearl then there will be nothing left for pleasure. But if the merchant really KNOWS the true value of the pearl, then the choice should be clear.

If the djinn grants you one wish, wouldn't you wish that all your wishes would come true, or would you wish for a million dollars? Choosing infinite possibility over finite possibility would seem like the better choice. But now change the rules of the game: if you choose between palpable and achieveable lifelong pleasure and comfort versus the uncertain possibility of eternal life, which would you choose? Furthermore, if the society in which you live urges you daily to indulge in life's pleasures, while scoffing and ridiculing the belief in God and eternal life, which are you more likely to choose?

Smoker's smoke because they delude themselves into believing that they will avoid cancer. Overweight people continue to eat or not exercise because they think that they might avoid heart disease. Or maybe the reason is even more disturbing. Maybe human beings are fatalistic at the core. We recognize that we have three scores and ten (give or take a few years) so why does it matter? The sinner chooses to sin because he too is fatalistic, which takes us back to 1 Corinthians 15:32.

For a believer, sin is a consequence of doubt. Satan encourages us to rebel just as he did in the garden, by tempting us to first doubt God's promises. Rebellion is the product of our trusting the wrong authority. We trust the solid world rather than the two thousand year old record of witnesses who never made it into our secular history books.

Peter sums it up in John 6:68-69 when Jesus asks the disciples if they plan to abandon Him:

Lord, to whom would we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life. We believe them, and we know you are the Holy One of God.

Our lives radiate from this ultimate core. Every decision we make derives from whether or not we believe in eternal life or whether we believe that this finite existence is all we have. It is a pendulum which swings between ultimate meaning and ultimate nothing. We sin because we are in the darkness cast by the shadow of a doubt.