A Narrative from Narrative Thinking

At the beginning of the semester I described my Narrative Thinking professor, Dr. VanOosting, as flamboyant but really it is more accurate to say that he is theatrical. From the stresses he puts on certain words to his dramatic pauses and the way he frequently interruptions in his own monologue to gaze off pensively into the ceiling tiles you always feel more like he is performing more than teaching. He spends the majority of the class telling us stories. They are all related to some point that he is making but their telling compromises the majority of class time. Since the class is narrative thinking, it's fitting that he would lead it in this narrative fashion but it's still quite the production. His physical appearance adds to the dramatic effect. He is a relatively thin man, age 58 and most likely around 5' 9" or 5' 10". He has long, voluminous white hair that hits just below his shoulders and a goatee. I have never actually noticed the color of his eyes, though I would assume they would be blue, because I am too distracted by his red plastic rimmed glasses that are just a size or two smaller than the style of glasses that were popular in the 80s. His clothes are never really that remarkable just nice-ish dress pants and a button down shirt.

Last week he told us his most interesting personal narrative in class. I remembered it tonight and decided that I wanted to share it because I think it should be shared.

When I walked into class last Wednesday evening the first thing I noticed, besides the sandwiche platter he had sitting on the front desk, was that he had thick, white bandages wrapped around the top of his head covering most of his forehead and making his hair awkwardly poof out below it. It wasn't until we were an hour into class that he explained what had happened.
Previously he had told us that he has a medical condition that causes him to randomly pass out. It is not a blood sugar issue, it has to do with a problem in his adrelinal system (he gave us the name but, of course, I don't remember it and even if I did I probably couldn't spell it). This had been the cause of his injury which he had received the Thursday night before, while his wife was out of town. He couldn’t actually remember most of what had happened but he had pieced together a narrative account of it, in large part by following the trails of blood throughout the house.

That night he had been watching something on TV (quite possibly a baseball game) and went into the kitchen for something, presumably food. While in there he passed out. Instead of falling forward toward the ground he fell backward, hitting his head against the kitchen counter than sliding down and hitting it again on three cupboard knobs. When he woke up he made his way back to the couch and sat there for a while then decided to go up to bed. He had a severe concussion by this time, which of course means the worst thing he could do was fall asleep but that is what he did.
Though he could not remember any of this he said that he must have at least been aware that his wife was not home because whenever she is gone he either sleeps on her pillow or on her side of the bed, because he misses her, and that night he fell asleep on her side of the bed. A few hours later he woke up and realized that the bed was soaked in blood. He doesn't remember being aware that it was his blood but he knew something was amiss so he called 911 and then passed out again while on the phone. When the police arrived and knocked on his door he assumes that he crawled down the stairs to the door because of the blood on the carpet. He was then taken to the hospital. It seems that the hospital experience is all he really remembers.

At the hospital his large head injury was finally cleansed and he received 7 or 9 staples. Presumably because he had gone so long without medical attention (I think they believe he got the injury around 9pm and didn't get to the hospital until around midnight/1am) when they stapled his head they did not have time to put him under or numb him. His description of this scene was rather amusing. "She [the doctor] told me that it was really going to hurt, which usually they just say it is going to pinch so I thought 'Yeah, this is probably going to be terrible but thanks for being honest.' Then she stapled me. You know with head injuries like that they have to use staples and they're like the big staples you'd use for construction. Nothing ever hurt so much in my life. So, of course, I screamed. Then she apologized, and being the good Midwestern boy I am, I apologize: 'I'm sorry I shouldn't have screamed like that.' With each staple we would go through our little banter. She would apologize and then I would apologize. When she was nearly done she asked if I wanted just a 10 second break, I said 'No' we could just go on. Then she put the staple in and I said, 'Well, you could have given me those damn 10 seconds!'"

While he was in the hospital a friend of his who is a doctor and specializes in trauma, or something like that, came to visit. His friend told him that he really should have died twice: once when he fell asleep for those three or so hours with his concussion and twice from the extreme amount of blood that he lost. This was actually the second time that he had an experience when he should have died. Telling us this story led him to mention that and say that he's never come back from one of these experiences with a feeling that he needs to completely turn his life around. He's had no dramatic epiphanies. "I just think, 'Well… I have just been given more time to keep doing what I'm doing."

When he said that I thought (in a rather VanOosting fashion), "Well…now here is a man who is actually living in a way that he finds meaningful." I think that's why he feels no need to do a 180. He strikes me as the kind of man who is actually living the life that he wants to live not just dreaming about it. I don't know if there really are that many adults who are like that. I don’t feel like I meet many. Even those who seem content I don’t know if I sense the same kind of feeling of purpose (if that is the right word). From the multiple narratives he has shared, it seems that he has very much chosen and, to some extent, meaningfully constructed his life. Rather comically he added, “I was thinking that if I knew I only had 24 hours to live the only thing I would really do differently is I wouldn’t grade your damn papers.” I appreciate this attitude. Something about it reminds me of Out of Africa (though really what eventually doesn’t?), when Isak Dinesen states, “My life, I will not let you go except you bless me, but then I will let you go.” I think he’s received his blessing. Quite possibly I’m idealizing him but who don’t I idealize in some way or other?

Thoughts On Being Played

Tonight I started reading Neil Strauss’ The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. A friend of mine recently read it and had been telling me tons about it. To some extent I was interested by what he told me but largely I was annoyed because it seemed shallow and exploitive. My natural distrust and deeply rooted bitterness against men and a dating culture I always feel outside of didn’t help to ease my irritation at having to listen to him talk about it. But eventually he wore me down enough to see some value in it and finally generated enough curiosity in me that I found it online and began reading it.
Admittedly, having been mildly seduced by a man at a club a while back also added to my interest in the subject.

As I’ve been reading it one of my dominate thoughts has been that I don’t believe these men would be so successful if women didn’t secretly or subconsciously want to be seduced. And, if we females are honest, maybe we aren’t so unaware of the desire. Women want to feel desirable. Even those of us who claim to have too much self-esteem and self-worth to resort to turning ourselves into sex symbols still want to be seen that way once in a while. Related to that, I think we want to feel worthy of seduction, even if worth really has nothing to do with it.

I was reminded of a female character in The Namesake who had been bookwormish and reserved all of her life until graduate school. For grad school she went to Paris and while she lived in the city she allowed dozens of men to seduce her. In a way she was very much like Strauss who, before he became a pick up artist, had been a geek who couldn’t seem to move passed the ‘just friends’ phase with women in his life. He admits to entering that society to some extent because he felt like this was one area in which he was a failure, he didn’t want to be one anymore. In a similar way, she was also making up for her own sense of failure in that area. She did it to prove something about herself and affirm something about herself. I’ll admit that the night I went to that club I had her on my mind and had a similar (though less extreme) goal in mind. My initial response after the fact was to feel accomplished and affirmed (though once my blood had cooled other thoughts arose).

One thing I learned on that dance floor is that seduction involves the willing choice of both participants (we aren’t talking date rape here). Also, that women lead it to some extent as much as men by our body language, our cues. The Game confirmed this to me with all of the PUA s (pick up artists) emphasis on reading women’s IOIs (indicators of interest). I don’t think we are tricked or coerced into giving them those. We are willingly giving into a desire that we have had whether or not we are aware or admit it to ourselves. We want them to make us feel desirable and if they do it well enough we reward them for it.

(I would also argue that women have their own art for attracting men that is rather impressive but I won’t go into that right now).

I used to think people did these sort of things out of a misdirected desire for connection, maybe that it’s true for some people and to some extent, but that certainly isn’t the only motive. These men don’t only pick up lonely women. They are often as successful with women who have boyfriends as with women who are unattached. I doubt all of those women really thought it would be or even wanted it to be more than a one night stand, if they’re really honest with themselves. I think sometimes we allow ourselves to be picked up because it affirms our sexuality and our sex appeal. We also need to feel like that person is worth being wanted by, thus the need for PUAs to come off as a “alpha males.” There wouldn’t be anything affirming about being seduced by a weak or pathetic man.

Despite how mutual beneficial I may be making this seem I do think there is a problem with the fact that ultimately the game (both on the side of men and women) is ruled by our insecurities, our feelings of inadequacy. Women don’t feel desirable enough or worthy enough. They are afraid they aren’t sexy and that their sexuality is overlooked (let’s face it, we have sex drives and part of us wants our carnality to be acknowledged and appreciated). Men don’t feel strong enough, interesting enough. They don’t feel adequate or attractive enough. Both can feel like they are failures in the area of sex and sexual attraction. The game makes men feel empowered and accomplished. It makes women feel desirable and provides a difference sense of accomplishment. But in the end it’s a masturbatory act. And will it really heal our insecurities? Do you think Hugh Hefner keeps at it just for the sex or does he constantly feel the need to keep proving something about himself?

Mystery, one of the most accomplished PUAs, says near the beginning of the third step that "What I'm really after is for people to be envious of me, for women to want me and men to want to be me." Style (Strauss’ alter ego) jokingly responds, "You never got much love as a child, did you?" There seems to be some truth in his comment and the exchange highlights what the game is really about. It isn't just about sex and it certainly isn't about real intimacy and love. It's about trying to make ourselves feel valuable or worthy. We are trying to prove it to ourselves and showcasing it. But I don’t think reaching his goal would bring him a lasting or meaningful sense of value or worth.

It makes me think of Tony in the British show “Skins” who is a bit of a PUA himself. Near the conclusion of the episode Effy at the end of the first season he says to his friend, "The thing is I know I can be a wanker sometimes but... everyone likes that. Don't they? Ball busting and turning heads wherever I go. They like that and I like people liking that. …Then I start to feel distorted because I'm more than that and I don't want to be a wanker." His little speech is a bit touchy-feely but he makes a good point about becoming the ultimate alpha male or an ideal score for that matter. Though maybe part of it feels great and I won’t say that we don’t learn something about ourselves, gain some much needed confidence and acquire some much desired affirmation, some important things get lost in the game. The affirmation especially lacks lasting value. There have to be healthier ways that are less exploitive to gain that confidence and affirmation.

*By the by, I consider the title to be a bit of a joke or sort of ironical since I clearly don’t feel played.

On Capitalism and Ayn Rand, Part II

After nearly three weeks I have resumed reading Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand is yet again wooing me with her brilliant prose and stunning characters.

In the last chapter I read, Francisco d’Anconia, one of the key figures in the novel, gave a speech that could almost have been written in response to one of the comments I received on my last blog. Since I promised that my next entry would be about Rand, I thinks it would be appropriate to begin with excerpts from Frisco’s speech and then to expound both on the speech and on some of the virtues that I see in Rand.

After hearing a man say, “money is the root of all evil – and [Francisco d’Anconia’s] the typical product of money.” Frisco responds with a long and cutting speech.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked yourself what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. …

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others…Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is that what you consider evil?

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes…Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motion – and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscle. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? …By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they have to offer, but the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgments and highest ability – and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

This is a large excerpt from the first half of Frisco’s speech. This section is somewhat idealistic but it is intended to be. He is describing the proper system of monetary exchange, how it is intended to work if people are virtuous.

It is very important to note that he is talking about how money is made or earned not how money is accumulated or acquired without hard work. In Rand’s novel, the villains are those characters who wish to have money without working for it, who scheme, loot or by any other ignoble way acquire wealth. Her heroes are those who make money through hard work, ingenuity, daring and production. Ironically, the former constantly claim to have no interest in material wealth and to be seeking the public good. All the while, their ridiculous scheming and foolish laws constantly put people out of work and are slowly destroying their nation. Alternatively, the latter are bluntly honest about their pursuit to earn money. They in turn work tirelessly creating and in so doing create numerous jobs for the very people that the villains claim to care so much about and try as hard as they can to keep the nation from collapsing (or at least they do until suddenly and inexplicably they disappear). Though the latter are constantly called villains they also are the most concerned about the numerous small businesses dying and the growing number of people out of work.

I love every part of Frisco's speech that I quoted. If you argue against it I must admit that I will have no reply, not because it is indefensible but because I find it incomprehensible to think otherwise. Even though his speech is slightly idealistic the beauty of it resonates with me completely.

One of the greatest virtues that I see in Rand is her insistence upon the worth of work. It seems like her readers and critics often overlook this because of her emphasis on money. Frisco's speech clearly illustrates, at least to me, that she values money because it is a way of acknowledging and appreciating our productivity. What is repulsive or repugnant about believing that we should exchange value for value and that humans should use their capacity to create and produce?

Though it is not illustrated in that excerpt, she also focus on the enjoyment of working. All of her heroes not only value work, but they enjoy. They do love making money, but they know that they earned it. They do not love it as an end unto itself, but appreciate it as a reward and acknowledgement of their hard work. They refuse to take handouts or to accept unjustified payments. Even when Dagny Taggart, the vice president of a railroad company, has to ask for money to complete a railroad she is able to do it with dignity. While she is humbled by her position, she knows that she will return on the investment given.

Though Rand’s philosophy is not “Christian”, this aspect of her work shouldn’t be despised by Christians. Even in the Garden of Eden man was intended to work. Though the Fall caused work to be harder, it did not erase its value. We are artistic, thinking beings with an amazing capacity to create and produce. Why would we desire not to other than out of laziness and vice? Why is it that we bemoan working? Why is it implied or argued that work should be a choice? Why do we think that would add and not detract from its value?

Rand clearly disagrees with how we attempt to separate necessity from pleasure, I agree with her. What is virtuous about that division? Why do we think or act like we can only get enjoyment from excess? I don’t think I have ever understood this. The only necessary work that I haven’t enjoyed has been meaningless, asinine busy work or telemarketing (for a few weeks one summer the office I was working for asked me to do sales calls, I thought about quitting every day. I am not a sales woman). Work that is worthy of my time has never been unrewarding: challenging papers, beneficial required reading, productive tasks. I am only unmotivated when I feel I will not get an equal exchange for my effort.

Rand’s emphasis on money may seem repulsive, and her view of men can be incredibly humanistic, but she understands that doing valuable work is more humanizing than handouts. She knows how important it is for people to utilize the abilities they have. It is degrading to assume that anyone does not have the capacity to produce a good that is worthy of trading. This does not mean that people do not need help on occasion, but when they do ask for help and are given it, I agree with her that they should do it as a trader promising to repay. As she states, “an honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.” We do we not encourage men to be honest?

We do live in a country where it is hard find valuable work. The U.S. no longer has a producing society; instead we have a consuming society. No wonder we are not satisfied. We hardly have the option to produce as much as we consume. Though my intention is to get my PhD in Philosophy and to teach at the collegiate level, I doubt if I will always be content with that. Ever since childhood I felt the need to be constantly creating and producing. What we do with our hands should be an expression of what we think. Is that not a Christian axiom?

Addendum:
To clarify, I am not intending to baptize Rand’s thought as Christian. I am aware that she was a devote atheist. At the same time, we can always learn from people with other values and other faiths. I wouldn’t at all support someone adopting Rand’s philosophy and attempting to wed it to Christianity but I think a Christian can still learn from it. I agree with the belief that God can and intends to redeem all human activity, production is one of those. I think that, to some extent, her view of production is healthy.

On Capitalism and Ayn Rand, Part I

It has been too long since I expressed my thoughts to more than a small group of friends so I have decided to revive this blog, even if only briefly. Lately, what has been on my mind is capitalism and Ayn Rand – neither of which are very popular topics and neither of which I really should be thinking about with so many other projects to work on right now.

Lately they have become unavoidable subjects, especially capitalism. Nearly every Monday, Wednesday and Friday one of my professors finds a reason to critique capitalism and point out evidences of its “failure”. Rather predictably, he praises socialism to some extent. Though he is a kind, well intentioned man, I am becoming more and more impatient with his tangential ramblings. The overly gentle tone of his critiques reminds me too much of the repulsive characters in Atlas Shrugged. More than that, I am tired of hearing anyone call the current global economic crisis the “failure of capitalism.”

The economic state of the world is not capitalism’s failure, but our failure for allowing ourselves to be selfish, greedy and above all irresponsible. For naively believing that any economic system gave us the right to exploit the resources of the world (exploit not use), produce poor quality products and spend well beyond our means. We are all collectively guilty. I am tired of the academic community scapegoating capitalism, claiming that it enabled us and caused this.

No economic system is perfect. All systems enable human depravity. The greatest fault of capitalism is that in exchange for providing the greatest freedom for human productivity and ingenuity, it requires the most vigilance. To function healthily it requires people to constantly be responsible and humane. Consumers have to hold manufacturers accountable and the government does occasionally have to intervene but it also only needs to do so intelligently. (Meaning it should intervene to stop companies from exploiting workers or being fraudulent but bailouts may be going too far.)

To clarify, my frustration is not that capitalism is being critiqued. My frustration is with critics whom I feel are refusing to accept our responsibility for the monster that laissez faire economics breed. I believe along with Dostoevsky “that each of us is guilty before everyone…and [for] everything. I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it pains me.” Furthermore, I fear that people are searching for some perfect system, naively believing that once we discover and adopt it that we will no longer need to be constantly responsible. Instead, we will be able to be irresponsible with no consequences. Of course, they would never articulate this but I hear it in the undertones of their thought and critiques. Possibly I exaggerate too much, maybe they would be satisfied with a system that simply requires less work and in exchange offers less freedom and leaves less room for ingenuity. Both ideas horrify me.

I am fundamentally opposed to cheap/weak systems, systems that require less from us and give less to us. Systems that leave no room for true greatness or heroism, that are easy but not best. This is why I find myself refreshed reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Her protagonists have such a great capacity for greatness. I must continue these thoughts later.

Reflections on a blustery day

Blustery, rainy days like today always put me in the mood to read but since Winter break began I haven’t been able to settle into a good piece of fiction. Every novel I pick up quickly agitates me. Since it is a Sunday, and I didn’t go to church because my parents’ church service was canceled due to a power outage (their church is 45 minutes away, so we still have power), I decided to attempt The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God by John Piper. One of my friends gave me the book for Christmas because she knew that this summer I had listened to some of Piper’s sermons and appreciated them.

So far, I have only read the Preface and the Introduction but I believe I’ve finally begun a book that will be able to sooth my agitation. It struck me as I read how serendipitous my friend’s choice was in selecting this particular book for me. Though I feel that I finally made my peace with God this summer, after a two year wrestling match, my relationship with him since then has lacked consistency and depth. Recently, it struck me that I had lost my delight in God and, subsequently, my hunger for Him. This struck me most as I was reading an entry from 'Am-ha'aretz Press, which is a blog that was recommended to me the weekend before Thanksgiving break. The author Isaiah Kallman wrote:

A good friend of mine told me that he wanted to become more disciplined in spending time with God. Then just a few weeks later, he confessed to how little time he had spent in prayer or reading his Bible. He said, “It’s not that I don’t have the time, but when the opportunity comes to spend time with Him, I make up excuses to do something else. I think the reason is that I don’t desire God enough.”

I told him, “Dude, please, I know you. You desire God. You’re hungry. You just don’t know how hungry you really are. I’m not going to pray that you become more disciplined. I’m going to ask God to show you just how desperately you already want Him. If you want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”

I feel very much like Isaiah’s friend, I desire God but I just can’t feel how hungry I am for Him. When I have time to read my Bible I usually call a friend or put in a movie.

In that same entry, Isaiah articulate something else that I have been thinking about a lot for the last four years, but especially throughout this last semester.

This is at the heart of the gospel [that] we must want His presence so badly that we’ll do anything to get there and stay there. We have to love the gospel so much that we can’t help but tell other people about it. We have to need God’s presence like the deer needed water in Psalm 42. We must feel our need to drink the living water Jesus offered before our thirst is quenched.

I’ve said a lot this year that the distinguishing feature of a Christian should be our love and delight in God. Not our love for Jesus as a famous humanitarian, or our love of our own knowledge about theology but a deep love for who God is. Quite a few people have asked me what I mean by that and how to do that. Answering their question has been difficult if not impossible for me this year since I have not been seeking God out or delighting in Him. I have known that to love God I need to be acquainted with Him. I should be seeking to get to know Him like a seek to get to know my friends. To me, that means reading His word and looking for His heart in every page. That means actively participating in His Church, which is Christ’s body, and looking for His face in their presence. Also, it means not being ashamed or reluctant to talk about Him. Occasionally, it even means reading a book that will draw out His character.

What I appreciated about listening to John Piper’s sermons this summer is that he focuses on delighting in God. His book that my friend bought for me, The Pleasures of God, is supposed to be a study of God’s character. In the Preface he summarizes the book by writing that it is based off of the “foundational truth” that “We will be most satisfied in God when we know why God himself is most satisfied in God.” More precisely, the book was birthed out of Piper’s reflections on a quote by Henry Scougal, “The Worth and Excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” Reflecting on that Piper sought out to know more of the excellency and worth of God’s soul by studying where God’s “delights and pleasures and joys” are mentioned in the Bible. He states, “I saw that the pleasures of God were in fact a portrait of God.” In The Pleasures of God, Piper seeks to illustrate that portrait. Hopefully this will be an encouraging read that compels me to delight more in God and to seek Him out more.

Reflections on Junior Year: Going too far

Back in middle school, when I first watched Jurassic Park I was most fascinated by the raptors. Particularly how one of the characters explained that they were always jumping into the electrical fences that caged them in, always looking for weak spots until they broke free.

I’ve always been like the raptors, constantly jumping into the fences surrounding me, testing my boundaries. From childhood through to the beginning of college the fences around me were made up of my duties and obligations to my family, friends, church and God also by their expectations for me. Though there were times that I was so winded and sore after jumping against the fence that I’d wished the fences didn’t exist, overall I found it comforting to be thrown back onto my rear.

Then I came to college. I kept jumping at the fences here but the voltage wasn’t as strong anymore. Eventually I built-up a tolerance for the weak jolts that I received and I began to rip through the fence. Instead of finding freedom and release, I got caught in the twisted metal. I went too far. Now I long for that old comfort that I’d found each time I was thrown back onto the ground.

When first I began tearing through the fence it was more out of protest more than revolt. But my act of protest has become an act of self-destruction.

***

Christian university has been a disillusioning and disheartening experience for me. I came here hoping for so much both from my education and from the Christians here. Instead I feel like I found Christ’s bride in bed with another lover. She’d given up on the Good News and abandoned her call to be a witness and live a life worthy of her calling. And after three years, I found that I’d given up myself. Eventually, when I decried others apathy and hypocrisy I was only indite myself.

For a while I was able to successfully fool myself into believing that I had not gone too far. That I had only given up on God’s people and not God himself. I justified my sin (arrogance, disobedience, irreverence) by others. Then, I began working on my creative project for Postmodernism.

Dr. Bonzo assigned a creative project as the final for Postmodernism. I decided to do a series of drawings titled Post-secularism and to redo my painting of Past Redemption: My Red Crucifixion. My thought was that the artwork would be postmodern in structure but also a critique upon certain aspects of postmodernity that I find appalling – mainly universalism and pluralism. While I worked on the art I began to feel that I was going too far, but I persisted.

The evening after I presented my art I had a talk with someone from the class about it. The first thing he asked me was if I loved Jesus. I’ll admit, it was a surreal moment and a shocking question to be asked. The conversation that followed was just as unsettling (convicting). There were moments when I felt as if I were listening to Jonathan Edwards’ charitably telling me that I was dangling by a thread over the fires of hell. Yet, he was right. My art was an emblem of my hypocrisy and faithlessness. As I worked on it I joined the list of desecrators that I was critique, what they did with words I did with pictures.

Any gaps left in that conversation were filled the next day as I listened to a sermon by Pastor Rick McKinley, from Imago Dei Community Church out in Portland. The sermon is titled Playing God. His church is going through a series on King David’s life and they had come to the affair with Bathsheba. As Pastor Rick explained that King David’s act was deeper than the physical acts he committed, that all of it was rooted in a desire to be like God, I was convicted. He had named my sin. I known that more than my irreverence and foul mouth stood between God and I but I could not see that I was repeating the first sin.

Finally, I received the voltage that I needed to knock me out of the fence. As I’ve been healing I’ve been singing David’s psalm:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities…
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.(Psalm 51 excerpt)

Since that night, I’ve been coming back to God and to myself in him. I’ve found hope again, even enough for his people.

A two year struggle has come to end. Of course, all of this has been more complicated than just disillusionment with the Church and Cornerstone. I’d been heading toward this moment since September of my sophomore year when I took Hemingway’s advice and wrote the truest sentence I knew:

Last night I almost renounced my faith.

I almost walked out on the God of Abraham and Isaac. I almost turned my back on the Great I Am. Not for lack of belief. Not as a sort of “Fuck you” for all of the pain and cruelty in the world. God just felt so far off and I so impure.

This cloistered community and its low standards allowed me what I’d always wanted, an environment where I could rebel without remorse. My rebellion was more than an act of protest against them. I didn’t want to forgive God for taking away, for calling me to bear His yoke. So I cast it off. I didn’t rebel in the typical manner (drug-abuse, alcoholism, sexual immortality) but gave myself over to arrogance and absurdity. I stopped speaking into others lives so that I wouldn’t feel that burden of being an example. But being my own god was not as rewarding as I had hoped. ‘I felt like Hesse’s Siddhartha. The world seemed like a horrible delusion and I was sunk in despair. I knew he’d give me hope again. He’d make me see beauty again. He’d remind me to love again. To forgive the world for being imperfect. But I couldn’t even forgive myself for being imperfect, and the world tasted bitter and life felt like torture.’ My shame kept me further away from God.

When I finally asked God for forgiveness I realized how much I had to forgive Him. It seems absurd to forgive the God of the Universe for wronging you, but then I’ve always been bad about holding grudges against authority even when I know they have my best interest at heart. In the process, I often conveniently forget that they do know best. Tonight, I realized how much God has transformed my heart over these last weeks as I was journaling in my personal journal. I found myself trusting in God’s providence, trusting that he wants to give me chocolate cake instead of tofu. I haven’t really believed that for a long time. So, I think we’re really back together again (God and I) but I know I’ll have to be more intentional about our relationship. As St. Augustine realized, ‘you have to start your relationship with God all over from the beginning, every day.’

Reading Through More Caputo

I have just finished reading the first chapter (and the proceeding Series Preface, Foreword, and Introduction) of John D. Caputo’s What would Jesus Deconstruct? Thus far it is disappointing. I hardly sense the same rigorous passion and playfulness in this book than in another work By Caputo that I read earlier this semester, On Religion. The first chapter of that book both angered me, with its universalistic implications, and enraptured me. From start to finish I swayed back and forth between ferocity and love. This book does not feel like it will have the same playfulness, the same vigorous sense of life. “There is not an ounce of excitement, not a whisper of a thrill. This relationship has all the passion of a pair of titmice. I want to be swept away.” Instead I’m met with Caputo’s self-consciousness. He seems afraid to let loose or seem too heretical from the start so that he won’t scare of his readers. This hesitancy makes the chapter dull and repetitious. Hopefully in the latter chapters I will rediscover the man whose thoughts both excite and enrage me and whose heretical, radical edge keeps me laughing.