Deeper Waters

Wow. I see a lot of talk has been brought about by recent blogs and I am certainly thrilled with it. I am never disappointed by more and more people coming to my blog. There is still much to respond to, but some of my friends are apparently handling that part of it. I thought I’d jump in some, but then I decided against it.

And of course, there’s a reason why.

There are some people I’ve had interaction with before and while I think it’s good to give answers for the sake of those viewing, I also tire of the same kinds of questions. It is as if someone thinks they have found a new objection and post it as if it was pirate’s gold or something not realizing that in 2,000 years of church history, it’s been addressed. (Don’t expect them to crack open books by Augustine and/or Aquinas.)

Now I do grant some people really have factual objections. However, I also grant that a lot of people hide behind supposed factual objections. Instead, these people would often like to go with any other kind of explanation they can have no matter how implausible it is just as long as it isn’t the Christian answer.

If such is the kind of person that I am with alone I will often say “Fine. I’m going off to do something else.” Why? I’ve got better uses of my time. If you don’t really want to believe no matter what, then I see no reason to bother. I could play a game or read a book or watch a movie or do something far more worthwhile with my time.

But what about their salvation? Let me tell you something. The gospel is no secret to people. I could go to the typical atheist today and have him explain to me the gospel and what I must do to be saved. Now provided he did so without using sarcastic language and such, I’m willing to bet he could tell me exactly what the Christian worldview teaches on this question.

Now if it isn’t factual. Then what is it? There are only two kinds left. It is either emotional or volitional. Emotional is quite common today and most doubt is emotional. It is the person of unruly emotions who hides it behind rationality. When our emotions are out of control, we can think of all kinds of reasons to believe nonsense things. We get our emotions under control and we realize that it was all nonsense indeed.

Then there is volitional doubt. This is the kind of person who doesn’t want to believe. They are living in some sort of sin often and knows that Christianity has something to say about it. Or, they could just be an individual with pride who doesn’t want to believe what is for all of these stupid backwater people.

Can I diagnose each case? No. It’s not my place. However, I would just ask simple questions. What is really keeping you from believing right now? I’ve dialogued with some people before who have shown great signs of emotional doubt. I watch for this kind of thing closely when dialoguing with someone outside of the Christian worldview. (For the record, Christians can believe for purely emotional reasons also and these are prone to fall away.)

That comes down to the resurrection mainly. Do you have a killer argument against it? Do you really believe that your argument holds water? If so, present it. Let it be examined. Let’s go through it all piece by piece. If you want to start with God’s existence first, fine. That can be done. If the skeptic needs then the reliability of Scripture, sure. We’ll do it. If he then needs the evidence directly for the resurrection, fine. Just start where they are.

I just ask people in dialoguing to watch not only what is said but what is not said. Watch for smokescreens. If someone keeps raising intellectual objections and doesn’t acknowledge what has been said thus far, you most likely are dealing with a non-factual doubter.

By the way, don’t think that we’re Christians also because we necessarily want to be. I think of what D’Souza said about the Ten Commandments. He could think of three he’d scratch off the list right now if he could. There is only one reason anyone should be a Christian. It’s because Christianity is true. What you like is irrelevant. Also, if I was just choosing a religion I’d like, it wouldn’t be Christianity. It is quite demanding on my life and my desires. I follow it though because it’s true and though my sinful nature screams against it at times, it’s the best way to live in the end.

Watch for smokescreens friends. There is a time to answer and there’s a time to walk away. Wisdom consists in knowing the difference.

A reply to my post last night mentioned Genesis 3 where the man was to be made like God knowing good and evil. I have good reason to believe that this was meant in a sarcastic manner. Unfortunately, the writer didn’t give the context. I don’t mean the context of the passage, but the way he wanted me to take it. What does he desire for me to draw from this?

I can think of a number of things, but none of them really seem to make sense. Let us suppose the first one. Let us suppose that he wants to get the idea that God knows evil. In this case though, knowledge does not mean experience but speaks of it as a reality. However, evil is only a reality in that it is a privation of the good and God knows the evil by the good.

In fact, if that is the point, it’s nothing new. (Something most critics of Christianity have yet to learn. Many points of this kind have been raised within the past 2,000 years of Christianity and have already been answered but there are some out there who never crack open a book and jump up and down thinking they’ve found a new stumper. Hate to tell you all but you won’t disprove the resurrection by asking who Cain’s wife was, who was his sister by the way.)

In the first volume of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Question 14, Article 10, Aquinas deals with this question. Does God know evil things? The answer is yes. How? If God is to know good things perfectly, he must know their absence as well. If he does not, then he does not know the good. Aquinas uses the argument that by light, darkness is known. In fact, he quotes the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius which predate him.

These questions have been raised. I urge the reader to check out the source for himself. If it’s hard to understand, that’s alright. There’s a lot in theology and philosophy that’s hard to understand and I read a text and often think “It’ll make more sense in a few years.” However, Aquinas wrote in a time when the students were familiar with great thought.

It was so much a time that this was written for the instruction of beginners. The beginners would have known Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, most of the church fathers, and Scripture. They would also have a knowledge of many of the natural sciences and be familiar with the Muslim philosophers.

Do we have any beginners today? (Yet somehow, we’re the most intellectual era of all supposedly.)

The second objection I can think of is that man did not know good and evil then. I think there are types of knowledge then. Man did not know it on a basis of familiarity. He would have known it was evil to disobey God, but he did not know the reality of what it meant to disobey God. He did not know the reality of the privation of the good.

But since this was about Lewis originally, let’s get it back to his point. Lewis wrote about how God wants to make saints. God does it by having the creatures be themselves and slowly removing all that does not reflect him and the creature does participate in this. (And I would say willingly. This does not mean that we don’t resist it at times though.)

That then is Lewis’s point. We do know evil, and we will still know what evil is I believe in eternity, but we will be free from its presence. It has been said that justification is freedom from the penalty of sin, sanctification from its power, and glorification is freedom from its presence.

Perchance there was more in the objection. If there is, I’m missing it honestly. There are other objections to get to though, and maybe those will come up in the next few days. This writer is busy though, but Deeper Waters will keep going to keep giving you thoughts on theology and philosophy from a Christian worldview.

This is chapter 8 of the Screwtape Letters. It has been called the Law of Undulation.

For those who don’t know, Screwtape is a demon writing to an apprentice demon named Wormwood. Thus, all that is said is said from the perspective of the demon. When you hear about the Enemy, it means God.
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

So you “have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away”, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?

Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dulness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.

To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily good; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.

And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

But of course the troughs afford opportunities to our side also. Next week I will give you some hints on how to exploit them,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

This is one of my favorite passages in all of C.S. Lewis, particularly the last big paragraph. Why?

Because we all know these troughs. We also know the peaks. When the peaks come, we realize the troughs were nothing. When we get to the troughs though, we forget all that we learned in the peaks.

There are times I have woke up angry with God for something. Things just aren’t going well in life. However, those times, I still serve. I sometimes wonder why, but it is just so built into me that I do so. I remember someone saying in a sermon once about the times that we say “Lord, I’m so angry now, but I love you anyway!”

I can relate.

I then take heart at what Greg Koukl says about this passage. The Christian who serves now is the Christian who can’t be defeated. Why? Because it’s not entirely dependent on emotions. It’s a commitment of the mind and will.

Well readers, I know it’s short, but I’ve had a late evening and I wanted to say something and this had been on my mind. If you are in the peak, be thankful. If in the trough, (Which is where I tend to live) remember that this too will pass.

 

Last night, I had a friend up with me and my roommate and he told me about a debate he’d heard about that was going to be online on the resurrection. We thought we’d tune in as we knew one of the debaters. Friends. I hate to say it, but I really was disappointed. My friend and roommate would be able to tell you about my steaming over here.

So I figured I’d give some advice as one who has done debates before.

First off, protocol. If you are going to be there at a certain time, make absolutely certain you are there at that time. Now I understand things can happen. If some crisis comes up, get in touch with the opponent or the moderator of the debate and let them clearly know what has happened and say “I’ll be late” or say “Can we reschedule?”

Moderators are an important point. Absolutely never do a public debate without moderators. I could not tell what was going on half of the time when I was listening to this. Neither side was really listening to the other and the non-Christian side was using strong profanity.

That gets us to listening. Do it. In the debate, the Christian wanted to stick with Habermas’s minimal facts approach. I agree with the approach, but I do not think it was good for this person as their presuppositions would not allow that to be seen as valid. The opponent told the Christian that the Christian wasn’t listening. On this, the opponent was right.

Friends. It must be realized there is no one approach that will work on every atheist, non-Christian, pagan, etc. If the minimal facts did it, well I’d say buy a plane and fly over every city broadcasting them out of huge speakers. You could convert New York City overnight. Unfortunately, it’s not like that.

I told the Christian this later on. Don’t get me wrong on this. I think this guy has a good heart and he does have enough knowledge I think to deal with a number of skeptics. This was one though I don’t think he was adequately prepared for. I had to say that while I disagreed with the other side, I think they presented their case better.

Make sure that you also word things right. The Christian used the term “Minimal facts” in the debate. I believe in Habermas’s minimal facts. They’re a great tool. I’ve used them. I just would not say “Minimal facts.” Why? Because if your opponent is familiar with the work, he’d just be saying “We have a Habermas parrot here.” If he’s read Habermas and wasn’t convinced, why should he be when you parrot it back?

If you’re using them also, go through them one at a time. Don’t assume your opponent will accept everything. You must start where they are. If they are a Christ-myther for instance, you need to start from there. Demonstrate that Christ existed. It is one step at a time to get someone to come to the cross.

Also, if you are going to do a debate, commit yourself to it. Make sure there is nothing else going on that will interrupt you. Both debaters made this mistake. We as Christians can’t afford to do anything to make our side look less than prepared in a debate. Now we won’t know everything, but we should be sure we know enough.

Friends. These aren’t just debates to be won. There are onlookers each time. You never know how eternity might be different because of what you said in a public area. Be prepared.

Hello loyal readers. (And all new readers!) It’s late at night here. There are some things to respond to and those will wait for a night when I can devote more time to them. I’ve had company up tonight and we had some good discussions on theistic topics after listening to a debate on the resurrection in a chat room.

Let’s say, I wasn’t pleased with it.

However, I had a friend write in with some disagreements with last night’s blog. The point seemed to be that I applied morality only to this life. Also, should I not be moral anyway? If there is no Christ, then do I not have reasons to be moral in my life? These are important questions that need to be answered.

The first one is the simplest one. Yes. I did apply morality only to this life. There are eternal consequences for our actions, I agree, but we won’t have the same problems in eternity. In the afterlife, we would have received the beatific vision and from that point on, doing that which is good will not be a problem.

Our question though of whether morality is relative or absolute does apply to this life and the current debate on moral relativism. There are no moral relativists in Heaven. (For that matter, there are no moral relativists in Hell either.) I also think we should realize that while morality is a fine argument for God’s existence, it is not God himself. The finger is good for pointing to the moon but woe to him who mistakes the finger for the moon.

Now for the second question.

My point was that if morality is an illusion, why follow it? It is atheism vs. theism. If there is no such thing as morality, why believe that there is?  This is what I desire to see. I desire to see the atheist live out the worldview of moral relativism consistently. When someone cuts him off in traffic, realize that no one has violated a moral standard. The other person has acted on his own morality and there is no standard by which to condemn it.

Yet this goes further. We cannot say raping a girl is wrong, but we cannot say it is good. It just is. We cannot say saving a drowning child is good. We cannot say it is bad either. It just is. If you have any feelings of guilt, you need to realize those aren’t the way reality is. If you have any feelings of having done the right thing, that’s not the way reality actually is either. That’s simply the delusion you need to expunge.

I want the moral relativist to live in a world without blame or praise. I want them to live in a world without good or evil. I want them to live in a world without ought or ought nots. I want them to live in a world without should and should nots. I want them to live in this world consistently. As Kreeft would say, for all their preaching of this gospel, you think they’d try to live it.

Let’s also remember that we can’t use the utilitarian ethic here. We cannot say what produces the best results. That implies goodness or badness in the results. We have no standard by which to measure. The results are just like the actions. They simply are and we live with them.

I contend that this isn’t possible. God has spoken. The moral law is clear on many issues. If you really have any doubt as to whether murder is wrong, you do not need an argument. You need therapy.

I hope this clears things up. I choose to live the way I believe the world is. There is a God and I am accountable to him.

Some of you upon reading this blog title are probably tempted to answer in a very sarcastic way. (Makes note to find more places to hide the bodies.) However, that is not the point of the blog tonight. It isn’t so much about me as it is about morality. The claim has been made to me recently that if Christianity was not true, would I go and do such things as rape, murder, etc.

My honest answer is, why not? Why? Because I believe that Christ is my God and thus the basis for morality. If there is no God, there is no morality. Now you may speak of another God out there, but if he’s out there, he doesn’t really care about us as he has never revealed himself to us. It can’t be the God of Judaism for the prophecies had to be fulfilled by now.

Please keep in mind as I say this that I am not saying there is no morality in systems outside of Christianity. An atheist can be a moral person even. Why? Because the Christian claim is that the natural law of morality has always been around. Paul says in Romans 2 that the law is written on our hearts. We all know that murder is wrong and if someone claims to know otherwise, they don’t need an argument. They need a psychiatrist.

However, to say that I would live the same life as I do now is to deny the power of Christ. It is because of Christ that I don’t treat that female the way I would like to. It’s because of Christ that I don’t punch out that jerk that I meet like I would like to. It’s because of Christ that I don’t cut corners to make an extra buck like I would like to.

Now let us suppose that I saw this morality was an illusion. If it was, then why should I even follow it any more? Once I see that the emperor has no clothes, there is no reason to pay attention any more. If there is nothing objectively moral, then the idea of being a good or bad person is gone. There is no good or bad. There is only indifference. I can treat the lady like a lady or I can rape her. The difference is only in the action and effect. There is no difference in morality.

Was I a bad person before Christ? Well, I wouldn’t deny I was a fallen sinner, but I grew up in a Christian home and I was never a trouble-making kid. All in all, I was a good child. However, now that I know the truth about what I believe and about morality that I didn’t know earlier, if I saw that morality to be false, then I see no reason to follow it.

Because of Christ, at my heart, I see who I really am. I see then also my need for him. I see more of my sinfulness every day and in turn, I should see more grace. Sometimes though, the grace is harder for me to realize and that is a point I am pondering and will write on another day when I get my thoughts clearer.

For now though, I will stick with this truth. At heart, I need Christ to live the life I ought to live. As I submit to the transforming power he gives, I will recognize my fallenness more and his glory and love all the more.

A reply asked why couldn’t it be more that the creation reveals God rather than just reflects him. I really like something like this as it shows me the person who makes this statement is thinking, and I hope you all know by now that I like to see Christians thinking. It’s something we need to take up again.

I think my friend has an excellent point. I like to use the word reflect though because of thinking about how God looks at us and how he wants to look at us and when he sees us, he sees nothing that contradicts his holiness. There have been some scholars who speculate, and it could well be the case, that Christian was first an insulting title meaning the people were little Christs. Their lives were to show him so well walking around that they were his mirrors.

There is only one area I take issue with. That is in saying that God creates order and structure. I believe these are in God himself. God is not chaotic. God is a unity of diverse persons. There is an order in the Godhead as the Son is begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

I think my friend would agree that what is revealed is that which is in the nature of God though. This would include beauty. Now someone might say that beauty is physical. Many times, it is, but that physical aspect points to a concept beyond itself, just as the words of a poem point beyond them to what they describe.

As an example, suppose I take a lady. The skin of a lady is simply a combination of molecules which we would probably not consider beautiful in themselves. (Although they could be. I haven’t seen under a microscope yet.) However, there is a combination of unity and symmetry and proportion that comes together in the body of a lady that makes all of those molecules suddenly attractive to a guy.

In the same way, while we cannot see God, we can see him expressed in the physical world and the physical world points to a greater reality beyond itself. It points to the reality of the God who is there. God is the final cause of all that is here. All of it speaks of him. The Psalmist said that the Heavens declare his glory. (Psalm 19:1) I have no doubt that this would include the Earth as well.

I appreciate what my friend said. I would contend that the main reason I say reflect is because I think it does entail revealing as well and also, when it comes to me, it reminds me that when I look at my own life, that I am supposed to be one that reflects Christ. In so doing, hopefully I reveal him to a lost world.

Last night, I’m watching Smallville seeing as I have time late at night and I didn’t have to work this morning. It’s the episode called Justice that is about the Justice League being in Smallville to deal with a plan of Lex Luthor’s. They’re not the Justice League by name yet, but they are a team of superheroes trying to make a difference. At the end, all the other friends go out on another assignment while Clark stays behind to deal with something else first. His good friend Chloe though says to him “You have some amazing friends Clark Kent.” (So many of us were hoping she’d say super.)

Now that’s a line that’ll stick. I knew then and there that I had the blog for tonight already set and indeed, I do. I do plan to write on the comment left on my blog from last night as it’s an important one and the lady who made it I know and I find her to be one who is quite insightful and wise.

I don’t know your response to me. You might be a regular reader who enjoys my blogs. You might be a first-time reader. You might be a skeptic who wants to strangle me. I have no idea. If you’re in category 2, welcome aboard. I hope you join the first category. If you’re in one, I hope you stay there. If you’re in three, state your case and I hope you can arrive in one.

I write my blogs alone. They’re not edited or proofread or anything like that. The content comes from my own studies and my own thoughts and listening to other people as well be it in personal conversation or in written format such as a book or an article on the internet.

However, what I do in ministry with even the ability to keep up a nightly blog is not me. That is in large part due to my friends. I would like to say that along with Clark Kent, I have some amazing friends. Now I have to write about my friends because I do not know you and I don’t know your friends like you do.

Readers also know a good friend of mine died recently. Another friend in response has made it a point to call me a friend when he speaks to me seeing as he doesn’t know if he will get that chance again. I like that approach. Thus, this is also my way of saying thanks to several friends. I can’t get to everyone obviously, but without them all past and present, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

My roommate is first on my list. This is a guy who puts up with me regularly and isn’t related to me, which is proof that miracles do happen. This is a guy who like me, enjoys sleeping in, but when I had trouble with neighbors here one time and had my car damaged and parking situations going on which I won’t go into detail here, this is the guy who got up early in the morning, even before I did, and went out and got photographs for proof of my case. This is the guy who’s spent his time working on my computer to keep it running smoothly and has helped me with learning the fine art of cooking.

And those are just things done in the past few months. He would also know my great thanks to him for helping me with an incident in my life within the couple of years when I was hit with great anxiety suddenly and how he talked me through it. For a friend like this, I am grateful and when I think about it, I wonder why God blessed me with such a good one.

I think of my friend in Florida who got married in June. I think of the adventures we shared when we both lived in our old city and how he made me feel comfortable with myself in so many ways. I think about how his Dad was in the hospital and we drove there together at 6 in the morning to see him. (Remember, I like to sleep in.) I think of how my mother saw us both later in my room collapsed. I think of how when a church didn’t want me to teach a cults class because I hadn’t been through a training seminar that he exploded on them. I miss him still, but I know he’s still a friend.

I think of my old counselor who first got me to the point where I could move out on my own and then to the point where I was ready to move to another state. I still speak to him regularly and he’s very pleased with my progress here. One of the greatest joys in life is someone who thinks you can do more than you think you can do.

I think of a friend of mine with a gift of counseling. I used to see just a humorous side to him, but those days are gone and past. This friend is more serious than I gave him credit for. I hope he continues down the path of touching people with his heart of laughter, for I think there is no greater joy for him in relationships with other people than to see them smile.

I think of another friend of mine who has been like a mother figure to me. She’s hugged me when I needed it and whacked me when I needed it. She’s made it a point that she won’t let me or any friend speak bad about themselves. With me, that’s a full-time task, but she does it. She’s always been supportive of me and is already talking about the great things she expects to see me do. A friend like this is essential.

I think of the friend who came to visit me for a week in my old city and hung out at my place. It was my first real encounter with the roommate experience. This friend and I have shared a number of good conversations and have similar interests. I expect him to do great things some day as well.

I think of another one who is a big Smallville fan as well who I’ve had a number of conversations with. While we chat about Smallville and girls often, we do as well get into some great discussions on philosophical and theological matters. I trace one of the nicest compliments I ever got back to him.

There are so many more. I could tell you about the new people I’ve just met at the Seminary, including the staff, who are already showing an interest in me and that means so much. These are some of the people I’ve seen as heroes for so many years and now, I get to be with them on a regular basis and it’s excellent that while I knew them, now they know me as well, and I get to be blessed by hearing their wisdom in person.

I could talk about the people at my new church and my old church. My old church is the one that supported my move and were sorry to see me go, but helped anyway in taking up a love offering for me. My new church is always pleased to see me and when we have fellowship time during the service and shake hands, I know people are glad to see me. When the pastor greets me, I know he’s not just being courteous. He really likes to see me.

No. I may not have super speed like Clark Kent. I may not have Heat vision or X-Ray vision or ice breath or super strength or invulnerability or super hearing, but I remember an old quote of his when his powers got leeched. The person who got his powers didn’t get his best gifts. Those are his Mom and Dad. I do have one great gift Clark Kent has as well. I have amazing friends. I’m thankful for them.

Now it’s your turn. Go find those amazing friends and tell them you’re thankful.

I’ve been working on a research paper for class on the aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas. (For those who might not know the term, aesthetics refers to that which is considered beautiful.) For Aquinas and for many others in the Christian tradition, beauty is objective. Readers of my blog have known for a long time that I contend for this.

The work right now I’m reading is “The Sense of Beauty” by George Santayana. I find this one fascinating because he has such interesting ideas. However, I disagree with nearly everyone of them. It’s brought me closer into knowing what it is that I really believe and the fallacies in the thinking of those on the other side.

On page sixteen of the book, he says this:

“So that for the existence of good in any form it is not merely consciousness but emotional consciousness that is needed. Observation will not do, appreciation is required.”

What I take him to be saying is that if we weren’t here, there would be nothing beautiful. However, we have to be here and we have to have wills because beauty resides in appreciation. If we do not have an emotional response to what we are seeing, can we truly say it’s beautiful?

However, I read that and thought immediately that that was the fallacy I’d written about in Thoughts and Feelings to which I will from now on call it the Feelings Fallacy. Is it possible to appreciate beauty without having an emotional response to it? My response is that this is indefinitely so.

I understand there is another work on beauty out there from the Christian perspective. I am working on getting it from the library, for the last student who had it has yet to turn it in and it was due more than seven months ago. The writer though says that if we were in an art museum and the lights went out and we couldn’t see the paintings, they would lose some beauty due to our not being able to perceive them.

I couldn’t disagree more. All of this makes beauty subjective.

Our problem I think lies in our thinking that we are the observers of the beauty alone and the ones that determine if it is or is not beautiful. Can we remember that there is an eternal viewer? It’s God. If he says something is beautiful, well it’s beautiful. If he says it isn’t, then who are we to say it is?

What is beautiful? That which reflects him in some way. Don’t think though that I have this totally figured out yet. I’m still pondering this more and more and trying to get at what beauty really is. I don’t think it’s clear enough to just say it reflects him, but I think that’s definitely a great place to start.

Let’s also remember something else. God is impassible. He does not react to things. He proacts to everything. He knows what you need even before you ask him. He has the answer to your prayer before you pray. Why pray then? Because you wouldn’t get the answer if you did not. He is teaching you how important it is for you to communicate with him and rely on him.

Thus, God sees all beauty and does not have emotions over it. Does this mean he doesn’t care about it? No. It’s a much deeper care. It is like the care a husband and wife can have after several years when the emotions have died down. Emotion is the explosion that starts a relationship off.

In the same way, we can see beauty and have no emotional response to it even though we are aware it is beautiful. Consider if you are sick or tired or both. You can see something beautiful and know it is and just not have a response. In fact, you could wish that you did have a response. (Most of my problems I think consist of not having emotions I wish I did or having emotions I wish I didn’t.)

I believe though this is something we have to get past. We have to get rid of this idea that all beauty is an emotional response. It isn’t. Emotions can be a response to beauty, but they don’t have to be. Many people can respond in many different ways due to psychology or genetics.

I shall continue reading this book as it is quite enjoyable still. Hopefully in the near future, I will have even more to say on beauty. Hopefully though, you’ve already begun thinking about it.

One of my favorite jokes you can find on the internet is the difference between men’s english and women’s english. Some of the ones for men are quite revealing and I think reveal a basic truth about attraction.

“Do you want to go to a movie?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with you.
“Can I take you out to dinner?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with you.
“Can I call you sometime?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with you.
“May I have this dance?” = I’d eventually like to have sex with you. “What’s wrong?” = I guess sex tonight is out of the question.
“I’m bored.” = Do you want to have sex?
“I love you.” = Let’s have sex now.
“I love you, too.” = Okay, I said it…we’d better have sex now! “Let’s talk.” = I am trying to impress you by showing that I am a deep person and maybe then you’d like to have sex with me.
“Will you marry me?” = I want to make it illegal for you to have sex with other guys.

Funny indeed, but I think hitting a key point. For all guys, this is where attraction starts. This is our desire to know the other person.  Now I have been writing about this attraction lately. I say this at the start though because we often get this idea that guys aren’t supposed to think like that. We’re supposed to be pure of heart entirely.

Guys. You can be pure of heart though and think about sex. In fact, God gave you that desire. All he asks is that you control it till its proper time.

This is also something we should realize as men. The beauty of the female is part of God’s way of telling us that he loves us. There is no accident in creation. God created the female form a specific way for a reason. He created it to point to him but he also made it a way that we would desire it and enjoy it. A man is meant to enjoy the body of the female because yes, her body is a good thing.

We tend to develop this gnostic attitude in the church that the body is this secondary thing. No. The body is of utmost importance. Paul in the epistles to the Corinthians placed great emphasis on what we do with our bodies. Man is not just a body and not just a soul. He is a body-soul unity.

Women. You need to keep this in mind. This is what the guy is going to be thinking about and as a way of honoring you, he should be keeping himself under control. The attraction involves the wonder and the mystery of the female and the male wanting to explore it for all its worth.

But surely attraction involves more than just wanting sex. Surely it involves the way you treat that lady.

Of course it does!

I do believe that strong desire is at the root of that though. Remember how the female fulfills the potential of the male? The female enables the male to be all that he can be and vice-versa. The two become one flesh and the man at that point is to treat the body of the female as if it was his own, because in a sense, it is.

So what does it mean to find the one that completes you and is your missing half? It means that you honor her like you do your body. It means you don’t treat her in any way you wouldn’t want to be treated yourself. It also means you don’t look for greener pastures anywhere else, for she has completed you and that which is complete needs nothing else added to it.

The desire for sexuality means so much to a man after all. I also think it’s quite essential to a good marriage. Notice this isn’t to be on the part of just the man either. The woman should desire this as well. Paul writes about how both partners can agree to separate for a time for Christian devotion, but be ready to come together due to their passions. Notice it doesn’t say the guy’s passions. It says the passions of both of them.

We can’t treat this as if it is just an add-on. God says in Genesis that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to the wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is the fundamental design. While the main purpose is the production of children, other passages of Scripture indicate the importance of pleasure and intimacy as well.

In my opinion, a marriage that does not involve sex often, is a marriage that is in trouble. How often is up to the two involved, but there should be a strong desire for this unifying experience to take place. There should be a want to bring pleasure and intimacy to the other person.

Now if we men are to keep up this attraction though, it involves us being men. A lady once told me “Sex begins at breakfast.” She was absolutely right. A man should not expect to come home and put on the charm as he climbs into bed and expect his wife to happily play along. A man should be charming all day long. He should make charming his wife a lifestyle.

And the more he does this, the more he grows to love her and care for her and be able to do what Christ commanded, and it’s quite a call. He is to be the one who is to die for her if need be. He is to treat her as Christ treats his bride. Women often say that they don’t like submission being taught in the Bible. Women have it easy! The man has to be willing to die, to provide, to raise the family right, and in the end give an account before God of how his family turned out.

That death should be the only reason he separates from her also. Men should make it a desire to please their wives. Ladies. I’m hoping you’ve noticed we men are naturally competitive and like to be the best at everything that we do, but when women are around, that takes on a whole new meaning.

Go to a park sometime and watch some older guys playing basketball for instance. Then watch and see how they act when a cute girl walks around and starts looking at them. All of a sudden, every player on the court (Unless he’s married or has a girl) will be wanting to show that he’s Michael Jordan. The attention of a lady can empower a man to do great things. This is the role a wife should play. She should give her husband the respect he desires so he can be all he can be.

In turn, the man should seek to constantly love his wife as he is so attracted to her. The more you are attracted to her, the less you will notice the competition out there. The less you will want to do anything to hurt her. Temptations will come, but when is it easier to resist? When you and your wife are on the outs, or when you’re treating her like a queen?

Attraction is important. It is rooted in sexual desire for us men, but it goes beyond that. It means that we be all that we can be to our ladies. They are God’s gift to us, and we should treat them properly.