A Part of the Play (musings on sweet desire by an orthodox rebel)

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desire of your heart.... [He] opens [His] hand, and satisfies the desire of every living thing.... He fulfills the desire of those who fear Him." Ps. 37:4; 145:16, 19

I saw a beautiful sunset last week at Shelby Farms. The sun set behind some trees on the other side of a lake. The sky became prismatic, split perfectly into the shades of the spectrum. The trees were jet black in return, and the smooth surface of the lake doppelgangered the whole image. As I stood there trying to take it all in, I attempted to assess the feelings moving inside of me. For some reason, I felt it was not good enough to simply stand and watch. I felt the need to do something, anything. Write a song or poem, do a dance or clap my hands, shout to the sky or even go for a swim. Dive right into that glassy, cold water, swim across it and then right up the trees and into the colors of the sky. Whatever it was I felt like doing, one thing was certain: being a spectator just wasn't satisfactory.

The experience reminded me of every time I go to see a play. I love plays, partially because of my education and partially because I've acted in them before. So I try to go see them whenever I can. However, I also hate plays because they make me sad in the end. Comedy or tragedy, I invariably discover that being a member of the audience is dissatisfying. I want to be in the play, to take up a role like one takes up a mantle, and be a part of that stage and in the midst of that story. Something bigger than me is happening before my eyes, something too glorious and important to just sit and watch. I want to become a part of what I see, to perform with the performance, to be one with the play. That is how I felt watching the sunset.

Some might say (not unfairly) that my analogy breaks down. I had said that one of the reasons I love plays and want to be in one is because I've been in them before. It is a desire for return, but how exactly can I "return" to the sunset? Have I ever before been one with that kaleidoscope ceiling of the soon sleeping sky? It sounds impossible, of course. However, if I feel bound to remain consistent with my analogy (and I do), then I would have to say that I have indeed been one with the sunset at some point in time. We all have. That is what Eden means. It is not just some tale about naked people in a jungle. It is about original humanity living an existence that we have long forgotten, and yet not completely forgotten. It has been imprinted onto our very souls, for our souls were made to walk with God.

At the origin of all things, we walked with God and all that He is. We were not spectators then: we were part of the play. How horrible is the separation Sin has wrought upon us! We have deliberately flung ourselves away from the central light of the stage to the outer dark of the audience. Worse still, we cannot even see the play anymore, for a veil is erected between us and it. Between us and Him. For now, we can only sense hints and riddles, seeing patchworks of shadows and colors, and even the small joys of spectating (which do exist) are reduced to aching guesswork. So now we sit in the dark, with our guesses, and our painful longings to return somewhere that we can't remember anymore. Of course, in Christ the veil is torn in two, but we too easily lose the wonder of it. We forget that Christ did not tear down the veil between us and moralisms or good behavior; rather, He tore down the veil between us and God, us and the Play, us and the Beauty at the back of all things.

Take your wildest dream or imagination, the one that haunts and hurts your whether waking or sleeping. I tell you that it is all true. One day, it will all be true. One day, faith shall be sight. We will return to the stage, we will cross through the woods, we will dive into the ocean, we will swim across the waters and through the trees and into the sky and then past the sky and stars and spheres to where we will come face-to-face with the King in His beauty and bright array. All the hints and hurts of glory on this world are but the screen upon which Reality is only a blur. That sensuous curtain is not a cheat, but a promise, a promise of greater things yet to be seen, yet to be done. One day it will roll away like a scroll being rolled together, and we will see and be like and be one with the One whose colors are the colors of the dawn. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Real Walking in Real Light (A Philosophy of Potatoes, Part III)

"...let us walk in the light of the Lord." Isaiah 2:5b

God is highly interested and invested in the integration of the subjective (individual) and the objective (universal or transcendent). This is a highly practical point of metaphysics, because the relationship between the subjective and the objective has long perplexed philosophy (especially modern philosophy). The conundrum lies in exactly how one gives due deference to objectivity (e.g., absolute truth) while not simultaneously denigrating subjectivity (e.g., our individual lives, circumstances, and experiences) or vice versa. This is a great mystery that has elicited many confused and confusing answers. Many say that we must choose one reality over the other, settling for either the tyranny of lonely objectivity or the chaos of lonely subjectivity.

Of course, we reject this forced choice between either total petrification or total fragmentation, as we should: both are equally repulsive and evil. The truth is that we do not want to choose between objective reference and subjective experience. We want both. We want our individual lives and experiences to matter in their individual uniqueness and have true significance and direction. To put it another way, we want both infinite constellations overhead to guide us and an infinite ocean to explore. Or as G.K. Chesterton put it, we want both the "authority" and the "adventure". Mere absolutism or relativism leaves us incomplete, precisely because we were not meant for either. The choice between the two is a false choice, for there is a third option, a distinctly Christian option: integration, communion, revelation, incarnation. In God (who He is and what He does), the objective and the subjective are wedded together in His trinitarian dance. God is the objective referent who validates and gives significance to our subjectivity by integrating it with His objectivity, whether by giving us the law or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In short, God's objective reality was never meant to loom. Rather, it was meant to be worked out through the fingertips, just as it did when He walked the earth as a man all those years ago.

This is not just a New Testament idea. It is central to the Old Testament as well. God is not a God who is uninterested in the activities of the world. He is consistently intruding, interrupting, and injecting Himself down to the smallest scruple of daily life. And no one in the Old Testament found this strange. In fact, it was the way things ought to be. For example, the first four verses of Isaiah 2 give a picture of the "last days," i.e., the days after the final judgment when the earth will be restored to the rule of God. Here you find the exact same pattern. First, we have the establishment of an objective referent: "...the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills...." Then, we have the point of objective revelation to subjective reality: "...He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law...." Finally, we have the practical, subjective realization and integration of that objectivity: "....He shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." All the steps are there, and all the steps are vital.

They are vital for these reasons: If there was mere reference with no revelation and realization, then the reference is useless to us (which is the position of deism and agnosticism). If there was only reference and revelation with no realization, then the reference and revelation become meaningless and inconsequential (which is the position of formalism and most of the Western Church). We need them all: objective reference, objective to subjective revelation, and subjective realization. They all make a complete picture. They all make a complete humanity, for we were not made to wander without guidance nor to sit without searching.

That is truly the wonder of it all as well as the utter satisfaction of all our intellectual and emotional quandaries. We are neither on a journey without a destination nor at a destination without the hope of a journey. We are not meant to be either lost or bound, for life is neither a ramble nor a dictation but rather a story, one with real activity and real adventure told by a real Author who has a real direction and real end in mind. He has not left us in the silence, for He has spoken to us; and His word is not dead text but living breath, breathing into every hollow void life and beauty and adventure and truth. His objective reality is not static but organic: personal, relational, revelational, and incarnational. His light is living and intentional, and we were meant to walk in it and be known by it and be infused with it like steel in a furnace, until we all shine like stars amidst a single sky, infinite facets in the crown jewel of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Endless Apple Pie (a musing by an orthodox rebel)

"...in Your presence is fulness of joy; at Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore." Ps. 16:11

God is a hard thing to imagine for anyone at any age. He is either too difficult and "fuzzy" sounding to understand, or He sounds like an incredibly boring person (with His hard rules and His home of harps and tiny wings and clouds as far as your eyes care to see). He seems to be a truly "grown-up" thing: dull and uninteresting and unimportant. Yet we are all supposed to want to know Him because we're told that He is "good": not just good for us (like medicine) but good in Himself (like a Christmas gift). How we ever got to the point where anything good can be both "boring" and "hard to imagine" is anybody's guess, but we all know that it isn't true. If we know anything about good things, we know that they are neither boring nor hard to imagine.

Of course, good things are hard to come by. Good days dissolve with every passing second, like clouds in a hot sky. Good friends and people come and go with the easy unpredictability of characters in our favorite novels. And good food cannot help but be eaten. It is a shame that good things seem so fragile, like they're made of glass, or better yet, snow. Without the right temperature, snow fades slowly and softly, without a word. It is lovely yet perishable, and too often drains right through our fingers.

"Lovely yet perishable" is probably the best definition for what we call "good things," especially good food. Whether it's hot or cold, a colorful collection of either steamed vegetables or spherical ice cream scoops, the whole edible edifice is just waiting for erasure within our mouths and bellies. Someone once said (perhaps absentmindedly) that you "can't have your cake and eat it too." It is a true statement, but it also misses the greater problem, which is that we can only eat the cake that we have. To partake of its goodness (warm from the oven or cold from the fridge, chocolate or carrot or red velvet supreme) is to lose it forever. Pleasing to the eye, delicious in the mouth, but then no more.

Can you imagine, however, if that "no more" was itself no more? It is perhaps a little difficult to do, but think about it if you can. You sit down to a delicious dinner (try and think of your favorite), your stomach not uncomfortably empty but just empty enough to enjoy a full meal. Maybe the food smells warm and thick (like a good potato casserole) or cool and tangy (like a pasta salad), or maybe it is a symphony of smells touching your nostrils in concert: red-centered meats sizzling, fresh baked rolls with browned and buttered hides, and crunchy asparagus stalks looking like tiny tree buds.

Whatever it is that you see or smell, what if you knew that it would never end? What if you knew that the food would never fade, that your stomach would always be just right to receive it, and that you would never grow weary of eating it (nor would you suffer certain "consequences" for overeating)? In short, what if the feast was forever? It is reasonable to assume that you would be more than just happy, for the good thing would be lovely and still precious but no longer perishable. You could have and enjoy it always: never-ending steaks and everlasting green beans and endless apple pie.

If you could (even for a moment) imagine such a thing, then you would understand God a little better. He is the one where all good things last without any fear of fading away. He is where the feast is forever. Old churchmen (living over a thousand years ago) often said that heaven is where "the good" dwells and never ends, and even older churchmen than they spoke of God throwing a "marriage supper" at the end of time when heaven and earth have come together at last. To those incredibly old men and women, God was not about harps and humdrums but rather all good things, filled to the top and imperishable. In Him the good days will never dissolve, nor good friends be separated by time or place. In Him the snow never melts, nor the springtime flowers fail to bloom in their collage of colors. In Him the joys are unending, and you can, finally and wonderfully, have your cake and eat it too.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Truth Always Wins (a short musing by an orthodox rebel)

"We can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth." II Cor. 13:8

The deck is forever stacked in favor of truth. There is no escaping it or hiding from it. No amount of spin or bias can dissolve it. No amount of darkness or lies can bury it forever, for the darkness has no substance, but the truth is substance. It is real and solid and has consequence in the real world. That is why it is inescapable: it creates real ripples in the real water, and ignorance can be bliss for only so long before the steady pulse reaches you and the realization falls upon you. And what will you do at that awakening? Will you surrender to its onslaught, its redemption, to the shattering of all your vanities and the extinguishing of all your illusions? Or will you call for the rocks and the mountains to fall on you and hide you from the face of One so terrible, digging deeper and deeper down into futility? The choice will be yours, but be warned that there is no depth nor height that it cannot reach you. In the highest heavens we will bathe in its light and be infused with its reality like heat infuses iron in the fire, being the very air and water and earth of our transfigured existence. In the lowest hell we will wail beneath its judgments and thereby prove its proclamations to be right and eternal, being the very law that we have broken in our rebellious ignorance. So you see, it is inescapable: the undeniable fact. It holds all the keys and guards all the doors, and we all will honor it in the end. Whether by our adherence or our condemnation is for us to decide.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Desire vs. Differance: A Debate Bewteen Lewis and Derrida (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

Satisfaction is fleeting. No matter how hard or how long we search hither and thither across this good earth, amassing knowledge upon knowledge and experience after experience, we never seem to "find" whatever it is that we are "looking" for. We've been often fooled. Many times we think that we have found the thing that has been driving us forward, calling us out through the various wasted realms of this world, from decadence to deprivation; but each time we reach what we think is finally the thing, the drive and the call remains. Thus, we are perpetually restless, fluttering our wings from one nest to the next.

Exactly what this phenomenon (if it even is a "phenomenon") is has preoccupied the minds of many. Two in particular have addressed it: one perhaps indirectly, while the other definitely directly. The former was French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and the latter was British scholar C.S. Lewis. Both seemed to notice the same phenomenon (in slightly different forms), and both theorized about what it could possibly mean. Exactly what their conclusions were have shaped the minds of many (whether they knew it or not) that have come after them.

The smoke-and-mirrors of words.

Derrida is famous (or infamous) for being the primary architect of the critical theory of "deconstruction," which famously asserts, "There is nothing outside the text." In the world of language, Derrida noticed that the meaning of words seems to be continually postponed: words are simply described by more words, which in turn are described by more words, which in turn are described by more words, etc. There seems no way to escape the webbing of language and get at any sort of stable, abstract meaning (i.e., an absolute reference of value) for language. Every time that we try to move past words towards their meaning, we stumble into more words. Every dictionary is filled with words describing words, while any true connection between a word and its meaning/value is not present.

This endless postponement of meaning/value in language is what Derrida called "differance" (a play on the fact that the French language uses the same word for "to defer" and "to differ"). Every word is different from its meaning/value, and thus its meaning/value is deferred; but the meaning/value seems to always be deferred. Thus, it is never reached. This raises the question of whether it is even reachable (or even exists) in the first place. Is there any way outside of "text"? Differance thinks not.

Though Derrida's point was (arguably) purely textual in nature, those that he influenced took his ideas out of the realm of language and into the realm of actual existence. All things are "text" because all things are described/defined/shaped by language. You are a person because we have a word called "person"; there is a God because we have a word called "God". Any attempt to further define either of those words will lead us, not to real personhood or the real God, but more words. In this sense, all is text; and if all is text, then there is nothing outside of that text, viz., there is no (or no knowable) stable meaning/value to existence. Any meaning/value we create is just that: a creation of our own that is simply and endlessly deferred to something else. We do not have beauty; all we have is the word "beauty" and whatever other words we use to define it. We do not have love; all we have is the word and words for "love". There is no God; there is only the word(s) "God". If things such as beauty, love, and God actually exist, they exist forever beyond us, because we cannot rise above the netting of language and reach them. We are trapped in a never-ending hall of mirrors and smoke, ever fooled and ever restless for what can never be attained, if it even exists at all.

The sting of sweet desire.

Lewis is famous (or infamous) for several different apologetic arguments across his career, such as "The Argument from Reason" and "The Trilemma". There is one, however, that often slips through the cracks, even though it was fundamental to his own conversion: "The Argument from Desire". The argument can be found in Mere Christianity, but its most fully expanded version can be found in the "Afterword" to the third edition of The Pilgrim's Regress.

Lewis noted that every human being has desires. Many are relatively simple, such as hunger or thirst or sexual drive. Other, however, or more complex (or "Romantic," to use Lewis' term), such as desires for beauty or love or God. For each desire, however (no matter how simple or complex), there is an object that satisfies it. We hunger, so there is food. We thirst, so there is drink. We have sexual urges, so there is sex. The object of satisfaction does exist. It is simply a matter of finding it.

It seems, however, that only the "simple" desires have immediate objects of satisfaction. What, then, of the more "Romantic" ones? These we seem to search and search for but never actually find. We seem to catch a glimpse here or there, but never the real thing. The object(s) of our more "Romantic" desires are always fleeting and fading away, only to be picked up again at some other point by some other object. Yet though the object seems to continually change (from this man or woman to that painting to that moment in time to that piece of music, etc.), the desire itself never leaves. It is always there to sting us awake and leave us restless and running.

Lewis believed that all human desires have an object that satisfies them. He also believed that "Romantic" desires seem to transcend our immediate context: nothing on earth seems to satisfy them. What does this mean? For Lewis, the answer was simple (yet profound): if we have a desire that this world cannot satisfy, then obviously we are meant for another world. When a creature is where it belongs, they do not feel these "Romantic" desires. As Lewis himself put it: "A man feels wet when he falls into water because man is not a water animal. A fish would not feel wet." Therefore, if we are feeling the sting of "Sweet Desire" (another one of Lewis' terms), then we are obviously not where we belong. We do not belong in the tangle of the text. We belong outside, where sweet desire is at last satisfied.

Both of these positions ("Differance" and "The Argument from Desire") have their different strengths and weaknesses (from a purely philosophical point of view), and they have their various proponents and detractors. For my own part, I'll only say this: Looking at the two positions (two of many, I'm sure), which one truly satisfies you; not in heart only, but in mind as well. Which one seems to answer more (though perhaps not all) of the questions of your reason and experience? I think the answer to that will be very telling indeed, not only about yourself but also about the arguments themselves.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

An Autumnal Devotion on the Eve of Spring (the expressions of an orthodox rebel)

I remember when my grandparents were alive they would invite my brother and I to our family reunion in a little town called Williamsburg, Kentucky. You would think such a thing would be a kid's worst nightmare. I mean, there was absolutely nothing to do there except watch adults we didn't know talk with adults that we sort of knew.

However, I often find my mind returning to Williamsburg. Though there certainly wasn't anything to do there (even if you were an adult), I enjoyed my stays nonetheless. Of course, I loved spending time with my grandparents: my grandfather with his kind-hearted obliviousness and my grandmother with her smiling sighs. There was an even greater reason than them, however, and that was Williamsburg itself.

Williamsburg is located right in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, and the reunion was always held in mid-October. Try to imagine the transition I took: from the oppressive heat of a muggy Memphis October to the cold and colorful autumn-life of the mountains. That transition alone was reason enough for me to go. I would gladly remain somewhat bored for five days just so I could wake up to the crisp mountain air, back-dropped by the Appalachian foothills, canvases of the colors of fall.

Since my grandparents' deaths, I don't go to Williamsburg anymore, but I still feel its pull. I felt it every time during the late autumn that I sat down in a recliner in the living room to read a book. To my right was a window that revealed a yard covered with leaves of all types, a burning carpet of color, the bed coverings of November. You could argue that God used moments like that to encourage my love of reading. I wouldn't disagree.

I feel the pull whenever I drive down Rust Road on a clear blue-sky day in late October. The trees that flank the roadsides hang down low, their limps limbs holding heavy burdens. As I drive past, the unseen wind would blow and relieve the trees of their burdens, sending a sudden shower of red and gold flakes onto my windshield. It's moments like those that make me feel as though I am outside time, gliding along like a blessed observer of some secret scene that only God, in His perfect omniscience, can see.

As the crushing humid tides of spring and summer begin their looming tyranny, I strive to let my mind glide along those roads and hills as often as possible.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Time and the Engineering of God (the musings of an orthodox rebel)

"Arise, shine...." Is. 60:1

What are you doing with the time that you have been given, with the moments that God has engineered in your life? I am not talking about some general, abstract sense of "your life," but rather your immediate circumstances, the here and now. Are you filling up these current moments with what God has given you to do (no matter how great or small), or are you wasting time by moping and whining about what "should" or "could" be (or even what will be)? When it comes to practical energies and endeavors, "should" and "could" are always a snare. When action is called for, it is no good to suddenly deliberate about whether or not circumstances should or could be better and subsequently whether or not your efforts will succeed. Such concerns will leave you paralyzed, and thus make the here and now even more frustrating. You must not fix your focus on the formless future; keep it on the present moment with its more defined lines and edges. Keep your energies on the right now where you can actually do something (even small things); tomorrow is none of your business (Matt. 6:34). Most importantly, keep your eyes on God, on His presence and promises.

What glorious wasters of time we are! God has called us to a specific purpose. He then engineers our immediate circumstances to aid (in some way) in that purpose. However, we wrongly consider our circumstances. We see them as a detriment to God's purpose, or we don't see them at all and thus don't capitalize on them. In either case, we have set our gaze on some imagined future situation that we feel we must wait for, and as a result we get stuck in the mud. "Oh, but I must wait until this or that falls into place before I can do anything." If you don't start doing something(s) now in the small and quiet moments, then you will surely do nothing when ideal circumstances come, if they come at all. "Oh, but what's the point? I am not doing anything that matters right now." If that is so, then it is because you are not doing it. Everything in our lives is engineered by God to fulfill His purpose in our lives (Rom. 8:28). If you say that you believe that, then what are you doing with the current moments that you have been given? How are you using the tools at your disposal, even (and especially) the small or strange ones? If you are blessed right now with inordinate free time, are you filling it up on some level with what you are meant to do? If you are in odd or hard circumstances right now, what are you learning? Are you learning? Or are you filling up your time with nothingness while you simultaneously cry about the nothingness?

Epithet: Do not waste one drop of time that God has given to you. It was given for a reason.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

On Despairing in a Bookstore: Prose Edition (the musings of an orthodox rebel)

(Note: Find and read the poem editions here and here.)

"Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly, for it is He that shall tread down our enemies." Ps. 108:12-13

I have often found bookstores to be terrifying places. Apart from being black holes for a certain unnamed blogger's time and money, they can create an overwhelming sense of smallness. Within those wooden halls (whose walls are bleached with the stench of coffee), there is a seemingly infinite amount of thought and opinion floating around, coalescing together into a monstrous edifice of worldly wisdom and consideration. Before such a modern tower of Babel, one can feel extremely tiny and alone. I am not referring to that childish notion about how your individual beliefs could possibly be true before such a saturated intellectual marketplace (for mere vast numbers of counter claims and opinions do not negate the truthfulness of any one idea). What I am referring to is a sense of impotence and hopelessness before it all: even if what you believe is true, what does it matter? The sea of human opinion is vast and varied beyond any possible charting. How can you possibly hope to make any noticeable dent in it?

As already stated, this is not a problem with unbelief but rather despair. If you lose faith in one belief, then you can (and will) exchange it for another and move on with your life. If, however, you still have faith but feel as though it is faith in a lost cause, then what can you do? You know that Christ alone has the words of life, and thus there is really nowhere else to go (John 6:67-68); yet the darkness around your little circle of light seems impenetrable, an unholy mountain range of impassable crags and impossible caves. In short, you have great faith in what you believe but no faith in making it matter. Any and every escapade into the dark seems a frustrating failure, leaving you to "reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man" until you are "at [your] wit's end" (Ps. 107:27). Your feelings of smallness and loneliness are confirmed, and they spill over into feelings of uselessness, with all ending in despair.

It is at these points of desolation and discouragement that we must remember: "vain is the help of man," including ourselves. If we are despairing right now in the face of looming and accumulated public thought and opinion, then it is because we see the fight as ours and not God's. It is through Him and Him alone that "we shall do valiantly." I am not saying that we will knock the whole giant monolith of counter/non-Christian opinion over in a night (nor am I not saying that). What I am saying is that whatever our impact upon it (be it great or small), it will only come through God, not us. There is a thing that He has given each of us to do, some sharp sword to stick in the side of the spirit of the age and the prince of this world, a sword specific to each of us. If we see that sword as a matter of our own strengths and abilities, then we will feel smothered beneath the shadow of the world. However, if we "seek the Lord and His strength," then we will rejoice (Ps. 105:3-4) and go singing into the dark.

Epithet: Let the unquenchable joy of the Lord be your strength and His unconquerable strength be your joy.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

False Dichtomies, Post-modern Hang-overs, and the Question of Worship (the musings of an orthodox rebel)

The following is a comment I left on a post over at my buddy Josh's blog. I suggest that you read his post as it presents a very interesting concept called the "Worship Tension Spectrum". My thoughts on that spectrum inform the following comment:

Every one of the concepts that you listed are all equally true. If that is the case, then we should take them all: our worship should be performed excellently and be participated in by the congregation, it should be attractive and disciplined, diverse and specific, spontaneous and traditional.

I think the problem here is that we create false dichotomies. Who says that excellence in performance necessitates specialists? Are not some of the greatest excellencies products of/for the people (e.g., Shakespeare wrote for the groundlings as well as the aristocracy, and Dickens was definitely a writer from and for the people)? I think we need to rethink what we mean by "excellence".

Who says that discipline is unattractive? If the object in your sights is of great value to you, does not that make every "effort" and "obedience" highly attractive (e.g., St. Francis called himself the "troubadour" of God, i.e., singing songs to His beloved in the shape of poverty and aestheticism)? I think we need to rethink what we mean by "obedience".

Who says that diversification and spontaneity necessarily negates doctrine and tradition? Who says that freedom necessarily negates rules? What freedom is there without rules? What adventure is there without some authority informing you on what is and is not right and wrong, dangerous and safe?

Just as you cannot play any game (even Calvinball) without settled and specific rules, so you cannot have true artistic spontaneity and freedom without (1) a clear grasp of the basics and (2) an adherence to some kind of tradition. We all draw from something, somewhere, even in our spontaneity. I think we need to rethink what we mean by "freedom".

I see all of this as the unfortunate hang-over of post-modernism: we set at odds things that were never meant to be at odds. We create unnecessary divorces. I think worship would be greatly improved if we would reevaluate the dichotomies and categories that we use to frame the debate.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

God Interrupted (the musings of an orthodox rebel)

"Thou, Lord, are most high for evermore." Ps. 92:8

The whole of the Christian life is about coming back to reality. It is about awakening from the dream; about flying out of the cave and into the sunlight. It is about sailing past all the lies (of ourselves and others) and into the startling, offensive, awesome, and relieving truth that God is God, and we are not. God is most high, and we are not. He is the life and light that awaits us when we awake. He is the daylight; we are only dreamers.

We are dreamers of the worst sort: we are illusionists. We convince ourselves of the most outlandish lies! We dance to the most ridiculous tunes! We tell ourselves the most ludicrous things and assent to them as though they were gospel. This self-inflicted hell does not end at salvation. We are in constant danger of it all the time. We cast illusions all the time, and of all the illusions that we cast, there is none more tragic than the ones that we cast across God.

We all cast illusions across God. We all give Him a particular mask to wear. At some point in our lives (perhaps we have forgotten when), God did something unpredictable and unexplainable. Whatever naive categories you once had about Him were obliterated, and in response you have done a most foolish thing: you tried to understand. You tried to fit those categories back together again, tried to reconstruct them so they could contain God once again. You're motives were partly theodic: you thought that you were saving God from His own actions. They were also fearful: you were trying to save yourself from God. In reality, you were merely building the walls of your own prison.

Every attempt to understand God, to fully and completely comprehend both Him and His actions and be done with it, is an illusion and snare. Every attempt to understand God is an attempt to control Him (for we cannot control what we don't completely understand). Every attempt to control Him is not a detriment to Him but to us. It locks us in a smaller and smaller box, with us unable and unwilling to accept that God is ultimately bigger than our understanding (Romans 11:33-5). Our attempts at rationalization only dig our dungeons deeper.

God will not stand such prisons. He constantly smashes them apart, constantly comes crashing into our lives, ruining our plans, upsetting our understanding, and collapsing our categories yet again. He is trying to wake us up, but we commit the same error as last time. We try to understand again, and we build new categories, erecting new walls around us, walls that God will have to smash  through as well. If this madness of ours continues, then we will grow to hate Him and say with Job, "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? And wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?" (Job 13:24-5) He will break and pursue, however; and we will count Him as our enemy, as a threat, as an unpredictable wildness too dangerous to trust. Perhaps we will still believe in Him and His Son, but we do not trust Him anymore. He has wrecked too many things.

Wreck them He must, however. We are trapping ourselves, digging our graves deep into the cave and away from the sun. We were not meant to be imprisoned; we were meant to be free. God will not stand any prison wall around us, even walls that are our pet favorites. He will break the box. He will smash the dream. He will set the dungeon aflame with light. He will continue to do so until we dead awaken, because He loves us with undying love. He will not tolerate our own private hells; He will not let us grow use to them, nor will He let us grow use to Him. Every fear-created "safe" version of God that we have ever constructed to satiate our need for limited liabilities and safe-investments is nothing but an idol that will be burned in the all-consuming fire of the God who is.

An illustration is in order. There is a wonderful little movie called Howl's Moving Castle. In it, we meet Sophie, a delightful yet tragic girl who lives and works in a hat shop. It is a highly dull and mediocre existence, but she is content with it. Let her beautiful (and air-headed) sisters have more in their lives; she is quite content and convinced that what she has is all that she needs and deserves. Then one day, she quite literally bumps into the rogue wizard Howl. Their meeting is no longer than five minutes, but in that time they flee evil monsters and float across the sky. Then Howl is gone, and Sophie is alone again; but things will never be the same. A jealous witch curses Sophie, and her life at the hat shop is finished. She treks out into the wilderness to find Howl, hoping that he can reverse the spell. In the process of doing so, she finds adventure, romance, and beauty.

That is the closest I can get to what I am trying to say. We are that girl in the hat shop. We have built for ourselves a very well meaning fiction about life, ourselves, and God. We are content with what is less. Then God (who can be aptly described as a rogue wizard) literally comes crashing into our lives, and everything goes topsy-turvey. What once was can no longer be. However, there is an important and unfortunate difference between us and Sophie: when her life was turned topsy-turvey, she left that life behind and headed into the unknown wilderness before her; when our life is turned topsy-turvey, we do not. We go back to that hat shop and rebuild, this time with thicker walls. We reconstruct our understanding of God with new concepts and conceits, and sit down hoping that maybe this time we will keep Him in check.

Brothers and sisters, these things should not be.

What should be is freedom: the freedom to take whatever God gives you, to go wherever He leads, and not bother your head about what exactly is going on. The inner-workings of things are His business; you are along for the ride, but it is a wild and wonderful ride. It is the ride that we were meant to take, and I want to express my final thoughts very clearly and (if I may say so) defiantly:

God is the constant explosion in our lives, and He will continue to explode our prison-like conceptions of Him and ourselves until we finally give up the insane notion that things can ever be normal again once He comes crashing through. Until we give it up, we will never be free. There is no freedom in returning to the hat shop to watch the trains roll by. Freedom only comes when we accept the interruptions and inconveniences of God and follow them wherever they lead. Sophie certainly saw Howl's interruption of her own life as an inconvenience, but being the sensible girl that she is she rolled with those inconveniences and followed where they led. Where they led her was romance, which is another way of saying adventure. However, there is no adventure, no beauty, no wonder, no greatness, no anything in the life that will not accept by faith the interruptions of God. Herein is faith: when everything falls apart so that life can never be the same, and someone asks you what happened, you can only  (and gladly) reply, "God interrupted."

Let the illusions fail. Let the ever-present, ever-burning presence and power of God smash them into pieces. Let the chains fall off and the prison walls come crashing to the ground. You may try to build them again, but God will simply wreck them again and again until we finally awake to His Reality and fall to our knees saying, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!"

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

A Philosophy of Potatoes (the musings of an orthodox rebel)

"Beware of the man whose god is in the skies." -George Bernard Shaw

Philosophies of the world and worldly philosophies drive me insane. Whether it be the narrow-minded bigotry of scientism or the epistemological bottomless pit of post-modernism, I find them all equally vacuous and (perhaps what is worse) ugly. Of course, there is something awry about a philosophy that is aesthetically neutral (i.e., dull), but there is something incredibly insidious about any philosophy whose aesthetic principles create and encourage an outrageous and offensive ugliness to inflict upon others. Surrealism, with its "art," is a good example of this. When any philosophy makes horror and insanity the standards of aesthetic perfection, you can be sure that it is a divinity of hell.

This is not to discount the equally sinister quality inherent in a philosophy being vacuous. Any philosophy that (while perhaps logically coherent) finds no anchor points in the practical world of existential experience is worse than dead: it is a lie. A philosophy (being an ultimate view of things) is meant to be as practical as potatoes. It is not meant to be isolated abstract reasoning, but rather beliefs about the actual world that affect how you behave in and relate to that actual world. Any philosophy that exists in an isolated, abstracted bubble is deadly; it is of the worst kind of spiritualism (both eastern and western) that views the actual world as (at best) a distraction or (at worst) a cheat. If taken seriously, it creates the hell of solipsism, i.e., the hell of the isolated self. Of course, no one takes such philosophies seriously in the real world. That is the point: they are vacuous and therefore useless.

As a philosopher (which is just another way of saying, "As a human being"), I find that I cannot keep pace with the ridiculous academic gymnastics that passes for modern scholarship these days. I do believe that the lunacies of such men as Foucault and Derrida (and perhaps we could even add Nietzsche and Schopenhauer) are dying out, but it is a slow and messy death; like most empty doctrines, they die hard. Their cheerleaders (those faithful few) will continue to sing their praises while the disillusioned will look elsewhere. I am thankful that I was disillusioned with nonsense long before I every read the philosophers of nonsense, for as a Christian I am always incredulous towards madmen. There is something cowardly and lazy about any philosophy that gives in to despair or ignorance, cowardly and lazy in this way: they are completely impractical and thus of no use to living, breathing men and women of the actual world.

I do not understand how someone can live in the actual world (under the burning blue sky, walking on the tangled green grass) and buy into either extreme notion that human inquiry can figure out everything (the lunacy of scientism) or nothing (the lunacy of post-modernism). Real existence (with actual existential data) cries out in anger at such nonsense, and no philosophy summed up real existence better than the Christian philosophy when its much marginalized philosopher St. Paul said, "For we know in part and prophesy in part" (I. Cor. 13:9). Immediately with that statement we are confronted with two facts: we have knowledge, but it is incomplete. We can know but only partly. Here we avoid the pitfalls of both arrogance and despair; here we are confronted by both the joy that we can know and the humility that we are not all-knowing. We are given truth and mystery, reason and romance, security and adventure. Here, then, is a practical philosophy, probably the only practical philosophy left to men and women.

The Christian philosophy is practical on this point (and all points, if we had time to discuss them) because it speaks to the realities of real people: their desires and circumstances. If we seriously thought about it, we could only conclude that everyone wants to know something, but no one wants to know everything. We want to move forward with both confidence and excitement, with limitless open sky over our heads and limitless solid ground beneath our feet, a paradox only possible if we "know in part." Take away that truth, and mankind loses something precious. If we know everything, then there is no excitement; life and existence are a bore, a tale already told and memorized without the possibility of alteration or the freedom of the unexpected. It is a paralysis of predetermination: there is no movement because there is nowhere left to go. If, however, we know nothing, then there is no confidence; life and existence are a terror, a swirling shadow of meaningless and menacing variables that stalk in the perpetual night. It is a paralysis of chaos: there is no movement because there is no direction. Both of these philosophies of men are untenable and intolerable. They do not satisfy holistically; they leave something out, something of real existence, something whose absence brings the whole edifice crashing to the ground.

Perhaps it is the height of irony (and tragedy) that the majority of worldly philosophies are just no earthly good. They either give a man too much or too little, and in either case they take everything from him. Christianity (with its core doctrine of Incarnation) gives God to men, which is to say that it gives us everything, including the practical necessity of knowing "in part."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010