Foucault VS Lewis (a fragment of a discussion on meaning)

Foucault: It is all very well for you. Claiming the origin at the back of all discourse. What benefits you receive! What power! But I am full of doubts, and you are full of ignorance. Perhaps your Origin does exist, but it makes no difference whether He does or not. I don't think you've got the idea of the rind: the thick outer skin of derivatives and endless dispersions which we call (in each turn) "truth". Picture reality as an infinite globe with this very thick crust on the outside. Its thickness is a thickness of words. Words endlessly refracted and repulsed by each other, splintering forth into a thousand possibilities, potentialities infinite and vast! We are born under the surface. Under the text. Piling more and more over our heads. If your Origin exists, He's not in the globe. He's outside, like a moon

Lewis: Even if that were true, my friend, He did not stay there. He was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Foucault: So you say, and claim it to be the central happening of all that happens. But can you not see that it is merely another displacement? Another dispersion? The Origin cannot survive the derivatives, for they are parricidal to the core.

Lewis: Indeed they are, and were.

Foucault: I see what you're thinking, but it is all folly. There is no central happening of all happenings. There is no center, no tyrannical focal point for the discursive field, but millions and millions of discourses with their own centers, leading either nowhere or (what is better) to more and more "centers" for ever. I defy your God! I defy him with all the power of words and empty spaces and repetitions and dispersions and make Him bow down before bigness. How can you claim that there is a center for all the universe? You were born years ago and it is from old, and most of it is dead space were you cannot live or think or speak your private truth-to-power. Look at it all unblinkingly and you will see that there is no center. No Origin living or dead or resurrected. No plan or meaning or summation of the discursive play. As soon as you think you see one, it melts away into nothing, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea; or else it mutates into some other plan that you never dreamed of, and what was the center becomes the rim. Thus I doubt if any shape or plan or pattern was anything more than a trick of your own eyes, cheated with a hope informed by a panoptic force outside of and shaping your fragmented self. I ask you: to what is all this spiraling nothingness driving? What is the morning you speak of? What is this Incarnation of the Origin to be the beginning of?

Lewis: The beginning of the Great Dance, though we do not talk of it "beginning". It does not wait to be perfect until all is gathered into it. We do not speak of when it will "begin". It has begun from before always. There was no time when all things did not rejoice before His face as now. The dance that we dance is at the center, and for the dance all things were made.

You would add words to words in lumpish aggregation, or discourses to discourses and dispersions to dispersions, but you shall never come near His greatness. Times without number He has circled the world while we were not alive, and those times were not desert. His own voice was in them, speaking His infinite Word, which dwells (all of Him dwells) within the word of the smallest discourse and is not cramped; the entire discursive field of play is inside the Word who is inside all words and it does not distend Him. They are also at the center. We are not the voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where we cannot come. Where there is, there is the Word of the Origin, speaking life into every hollow void, filling all ontos like blood fills a wound.

Each word is at the center, with all terms and categories. The discourses are at the center, with every dispersion they create. The field of play is at the center. The fragments of every soul are at the center. Where the Word of Origin is, there is the center. He is in every place. Not some of Him in one place and some in another, but in each place the whole God, even in the smallness beyond thought. Each thing was made for Him and by Him and lives and moves and has its being in Him, and He is the center. You say there is no way out of the text? I say there is no way out of the center, save into the Bent Will which casts itself into the Nowhere.

All this seems planless to your darkened mind, because there are more plans than you looked for. But in the plan of the Great Dance, plans and discourses and dispersions without number interlock, and each movement becomes in its season the breaking into flower of the whole design to which all else is directed. All that is or was or is spoken or will be spoken is but a spark shed from the fire that is the endless utterances of the Word of the Origin, and no mouth can gainsay it. There seems no plan because it is all plan. There seems no center because it is all center, and within that still point the field plays on.

-Jon Vowell, et. al. (c) 2013

Homily Magnus: The High and Holy Striving (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: 'I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.'" II Cor. 6:16b

It is the presence of God that counts in His children's lives and nothing else. The greatest danger is not always in what you're doing but in how or why you are doing it. Though motivation and intention are often less important than what actually happens, they can still be the greater threat because of their subtlety and insidiousness. They can creep in unawares and poison the most noble of endeavors with foul foundations, twisting them into paths of destruction. It is the fundamental intents of the heart that can lead to actions that we did not intend. Small, blinding miscalculations can bring the whole things crashing to the ground. That is the seriousness of the matter.

The life that seeks holiness and upright living apart from the presence of God in their life will become Pharisaical and legalistic without warning. Hard on themselves, impossible with others, and unable to avoid turning into anxious hypocrites. Meanwhile, the life that seeks some numinous religious experience apart from the presence of God in their life will fall into either a hollow and abstract mysticism or (what is worse) a paranoid and pathological occultism. Locked into themselves, blind to others, and unable to escape being useless statuary in God's trophy room (or being seduced by darker, more treacherous spirits). And the life that seeks social activism and cultural change apart from the presence of God in their life will become hopelessly knitted to the failing schemes of man, replacing God's wisdom and patience with all manner of man-made theories and solutions for utopia. Zealous for passing causes, vindictive of those who do not follow them, and incapable from avoiding fashionable fanaticism.

Do not misunderstand: this is not just a matter of giving God's presence a nod; any fool with a cause can claim, "God is with me!" Rather, this is a matter of recognizing and living out the recognition that without God's presence with you and within you, you can do nothing and are nothing (John 14:20; 15:4-5). It is not merely about knowing that He is there (for that can turn into a highly selfish solace), but rather about knowing that in all things He is first. In other words, it is not about principles and practices only but also priorities, the priorities that shape your principles and practices. And if God is not the priority of your life (knowing Him, loving Him, and trusting Him), then the well is already poisoned. No matter your intentions, the fundamental Intention is wrecked already. If God is not first, then He is not anything.

There is no way to do this perfectly, of course. The whole of the Christian life is this struggle to keep God first, but that is the point. You must struggle: groping and panting and fighting and desiring for the presence and beauty of the living God (Ps. 27:4; 42:1-2); and that struggle, that high and holy striving, must be the wellspring from which all other streams flow. We must ask ourselves the right questions: Do you abstain to honor Him? Contemplate to find Him? Work and create because you love Him? You must do it all for Him and no other goal, for there is no other goal except a chasing of the wind.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Touched by the Gospel (The Ministers of God, Part 4)

"...in all things we commend ourselves as the ministers of God...through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report, though counted as deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and yet behold we live, as chastened and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things." II Cor. 6:4, 8-10

Paul established that we are the ministers of the gospel of reconciliation with God. He then asserted that we are to prove ourselves to be such ministers in the midst of any situation and by the might of God's goodness. Knowing that no situation can break us and that God's goodness strengthen us, Paul moves on to the final truth about being a minister of God: we prove ourselves to be His ministers through every circumstance. Whatever context befalls us, we are to plow through with all the magnificence of those called by God to proclaim His good news, and Paul lists three kinds of contexts: cultural, spiritual, and physical.

"...through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report, though counted as deceivers and yet true...." As the ministers of God, we are not bound to cultural drifts and tides. All the cultures of man (whether they be decadent or wise, secular or religious, barbaric or civilized) will find some reason to despise us and our God and His gospel. Every fashionable fad or thought will have occasion to rise up against us, claiming and saying all manner of ridiculous things against us. The worst thing we can do (as some have done) is to surrender to and compromise with our current cultural paradigm, to give in to the crushing pressure of the passing whims of the world. The best thing we can do, however, is to live in the light of the fact that our true honor and acceptance is found in Christ, and our true report belongs with God; and if the world calls us liars, it is because they belong to the father of lies (II Cor. 4:3-4).

"...as unknown and yet well known, as dying and yet behold we live, as chastened and yet not killed...." As the ministers of God, our prime reality lies with what is (for the time being) unseen and not with what is seen (II Cor. 4:18). You may not be known by the world at large in any significant sense, but you are known by God in every significant sense. He knows you and sees you. His piercing gaze of light and love cuts through all the muck and murk of the world and finds you right where you are currently standing or sitting or laying. He knows you not just factually but intimately, because He made you, and He has made His home with you (I Cor. 6:19; II Cor. 6:16; Rom. 3:20). And though His hand may seem heavy upon you sometimes, so that you die daily and seem to be constantly chastened, yet it is done out of love for your good, to bring you to glory unspeakable and full of joy (Rom. 8:29-30). The worst thing we can do (as some have done) is to grow weary with God's penetrating presence and His constant "meddling" and to desire a repose into spiritual stagnation, holding fast to whatever fleeting pleasures and peace that, if you wish to go deeper into the divine heart, you would have to give up. The best thing we can do, however, is to let goods and kindred go into the hands of God, and in every circumstance march through as one who is known of God.

"...as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things." Every truly serious-minded civilization has known that the world is built on sorrow. The Christian knows this as well, and yet we rejoice; not in ignorance of sorrow, but in the midst of sorrow. We rejoice because there is a God beyond all sorrow; and yet He is not untouched by our infirmities (Heb. 4:15), and He takes pity on we who are of the dust (Ps. 103:13-14). His goodness outshines all the horrors of evil. Beneath the deep tragedy of the world lies the deeper comedy of the Trinity, and we have been made privy to its inside jokes: even while poor and having nothing, we are rich and have everything, because we possess and are possessed by God. Silver and gold have we not, but we do have the Mighty Maker and His all-consuming redemptive goodness that is full of life and light like lightning caught in a coal cellar.

So you see, we go through every circumstance differently than others, for our reality has changed. The gospel is not pleasant thoughts and phrases to us; it is not mere terminology. Rather, it is our context, our existence, the very air that we breathe. Circumstances cannot touch us like they did before, for we know too much now. We know God and are known of God (Gal. 4:9a). We know Christ and are bound to Christ (Col. 3:3). We know the gospel and have seen its power in our own lives, and we will see its power in the lives of others. So help us God. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Not by Rules (a quip by an orthodox rebel)

"...ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." I Cor. 3:23

"...I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you." John 14:20b

People may ask us why we're not at "liberty" (so-called) to do as they do. They may wonder why we feel tied down to "rules," and perhaps they suspect that we are not strong enough to stand without them. "You're free in Christ, aren't you?" they say. "Why tie yourself down?" Against these charges, we cannot say a thing, not because our accusers are right but because they will never understand. They will never understand that it's not about us anymore. We've been bought with a price: our souls, our minds, our bodies, our lives---they don't belong to us anymore. They belong to God and Christ, so we ought to live like they belong to God and Christ. You see, it's not about what we do or don't do, but rather it's about what God has done in Christ. He has made us a new creation in every whit, a creature that belongs to God. It is that reality (and not rules) that influences what we do, for how can we be what we are not? And how can we help but be what we are?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Boil to Rags, Part 2: The Great Dance (a devotional series by an orthodox rebel)

(See the first post in the series here.)

"For God so loved...." John 3:16

Herein is a great mystery and lovely beauty. The God that we serve and adore is neither mechanical nor inert. The core and source and glory of Reality is not a lonely dynamo whose silent energies are all centripetal and not centrifugal. The Empyrean Prime, who is beyond and yet sustains all appearances, is alive and He loves. All three of Him dances to His love, and all the elements and pieces of the universe dances to His love. All great galaxies and subatomic singularities and every mind and soul under the sun lives and moves and has their being in the ever-dynamic Being of Love Himself, His love for Himself and His love for all things made and begotten and proceeding from Himself.

There is no discontentment in His love, for it is a Dance and not a trade. Its transactions are giving, and it receives so that it may give, and give all the more. So the begotten is given and gives the proceeding, who gives and receives of the Father so that it may give further. So you see, there is no discontentment. No pride or bitter jealousy. No raging accusations or schemes of humiliation. Rather, all is a gift of Love. Love beating out and pouring forth from the very heart of existence like golden heat from an eternal furnace.

Yet there is also no contentment in this Love, never a moment where it utters, "Hold, it is enough." All of its endings are beginnings. All of its deaths are resurrections. All things are made new and newer still, further up and further in to newer and newer perfections, deeper still into the divine substance of the Perfect Himself. He is not satisfied with anything less than Himself, and He is not satisfied with giving anything less than Himself, so that He might receive nothing less than Himself. And it is we, we few, we happy few who are meant to be caught up in that holy reception, made one with the Divine Dance, finding our measure and place. Not lost in the impersonal ether, but found. Found by Love at last. Seeing Him face to face at last. Knowing Him as we are known. There is no fading here, no ceasing to be. You do not cease to be once you rest in the bosom of Being. There you Are. There you finally Become. In the center of His Love is the ending and beginning of our very existence.

Let the heathen rage. Let them weep and gnash their teeth with their gods of sex and money, of self and self alone, of noise and chaos, of static and silence. The Threefold Heart and Mind and Lord of all is calling. His voice is in the stars, on the winds, on the very lips of the morning: "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily 35: You're Doing It Wrong (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him.... See to it that no one takes you captive...to the rudiments of the world." Col. 2:6-8

As Christians, our Reality is Christ, not the world and its ideas and notions. We are a new creation, new creatures, new men and women, essentially different from all other people and people groups (II Cor. 5:17). The fundamental rules for our life and existence have changed; the mainspring is moving to a completely different time. We do not move to the world anymore: we are pulled by the gravity of another world and star. We are peculiar people indeed, extraterrestrial in the truest sense: this world is not our home.

Our apprehension and appreciation of this one truth (i.e., that we belong to a new world, a new reality, a new life) is constantly under assault in the day-to-day lives that we must live. The world that we wander through as aliens and strangers (I Pet. 2:11) is continually trying to entangle us in its particulars. I am not simply speaking of sin, though heaven knows that would be evil enough. Rather, I am including all the aspects of the world: its fads and fashions, hysterias and manias, creeds and dogmas, philosophies and principles, notions and instincts and assumptions, moralisms and political correctness, politics and passions, thoughts and wishes and desires, and even cares and concerns. The world runs its own course, fundamentally secular with tinges of misplaced mysticism, ignorant and devoid of the God who is, ringing out its own hollow note on its lonely sphere. And we too often dance to its tune.

Ought we to care for the poor? The diseased? The hurting? Absolutely, but ask yourself: why do you do these things? What is your motive and purpose? Is it some man-made utopic vision, born of this or that political philosophy? Is it some shallow sentimentalism of your own, fanned and fueled by this or that speaker or book or conference or rally? If so, then you are wrong; sincere, but wrong. We are Christians: born of God and built on Christ. What do we care for the utopias and visions and sentiments of this world? We care for the poor and diseased and hurting because we belong to a kingdom that is not of this world, a kingdom where poverty, disease, and suffering have not, do not, and will not exist. A kingdom whose God loves all men, not by any human philosophy or politic or standard of our own, but because He is love. A kingdom that is coming soon, whose Christ is the firstborn and forerunner, and we are the first-fruits and ambassadors. If your are serving the least of these for any other reason than the new reality to which you belong to by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the most intimate of communions, then you're doing it wrong.

Shall we fight for social justice? Of course, but we must fight it as Christians. Shall we involve ourselves in politics? Absolutely, but we must involve ourselves as Christians. Shall we engage the arts and culture, creating our own in the process? Naturally, but we must engage and create as Christians. We must make as Christians. Build as Christians. Fight as Christians. Eat, pray, and love as Christians. Live and die as Christians. In whatever our hands find to do, we do it with our might "as unto the Lord" (Col. 3:17), for our "affections," our innermost disposition and being, is set on things above, not on things of the earth (Col. 3:1-2). We are partakers and practitioners of this great secret: that the only way to be of any earthly good is to be heavenly-minded. We must never lose sight of the heavenly vision, to which we are bound and knit together by the love of God, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the seal of the Spirit. From that vision, that sight of the Empyrean Prime, we live and move and have our being. That is no abstract assertion; it is the truth of our very existence as the children of God. We belong to Christ, who is one with the Father (John 17:20-23; Col. 3:3). That is our reality, the very ground and footholds for our day-to-day walking and waking. Pray to God that His Spirit would make it more and more real to us in every corner of our lives. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

The Non-Transcendence Problem (A Philosophy of Potatoes, Part II)

My approach to philosophy (that consummate bogeyman) is to simplify things. I am not saying that I dumb things down so that their true meaning is lost. What I do mean is that I strive to cut through all the jargon and blather and find the most fundamental expression of an idea or issue. Personal experience has taught me that any philosophic position (no matter how monstrously opaque) can be boiled down by certain degrees to a single, simple statement that sums up what is really being said. Furthermore, personal experience has also taught me that once that single, simple statement has been reached, the rest of the jargon and blather (of both the original position and even its derivatives) takes on a sudden clarity. Thus, I've found the practice of simplifying things to be highly practical for reasons in addition to making philosophy less terrifying than it already is.

An example of this came to me recently while reading through Roger Scruton's Modern Philosophy. Despite its dull and formidable sounding name, the book reveals Scruton's penchant for making philosophic concepts (as best as can be) digestible for the man or woman on the street as well as acceptable to the academic. What I've learned so far has been exciting as well as enlightening, and I feel lead to share my recent discoveries.

Modern philosophy begins with Descartes, who (besides saying, "I think, therefore I am") created what has been the most perplexing issue for modern philosophy. It is an issue of epistemology (i.e., how we can have true knowledge), and it is rather disturbing. He postulated two scenarios that utterly questioned our ability to know anything at all. The first can be called "Descartes dream," i.e., the world that we know and see and feel is all an illusion created by our own minds, similar to a dream. An idea somewhat echoed recently in Inception, reality (the "waking" world) is beyond us, and we are so effectively wrapped up in the dream of our own making that we can never even know that the real world exists. If this scenario is true, then how can we ever have true knowledge?

The second scenario is even more disturbing. It is called "Descartes demon," i.e., the world that we know and see and feel is all an illusion created by a "demon" who whispers it in our ear and weaves it in our mind. Similar to The Matrix, this scenario is troubling to many because (unlike the "dream") there is no reality outside of the illusion except for the "demon". Thus, there is nothing to "wake up" to.

You may ask why someone would postulate such a scenario and scare the rest of us to death. The answer is that he is trying to figure out how we can have true knowledge, i.e., how can we breach the dream, defeat the demon, and arrive at truth. Modern philosophy can be seen as continual attempts to do just that.

There are the Realists, those old-fashioned followers of Plato, who assert that truth/reality is in another realm beyond us that we can reach through our reasoning powers. If you want to know what is true justice or true love (or whatever else), then spend your time contemplating the idea of justice or love, devoid of the distracting particulars of this realm.

The problem, however, is that our reasoning powers (being a part of us) seems incapable of rising above "this realm" in order to get to "that realm" of truth/reality. In the end, the demon laughs in the face of our futile reason.

Then there are the Idealists, those inscrutable followers of Kant, who assert that if we would objectively analyze thought itself, then we could discover which kinds of arguments and modes of thinking are the best for arriving at truth/reality.

The problem, however, is that we must use thinking in order to do this, and how exactly does one use thinking to transcend thinking in order to study thinking? Our very apparatus of flight is the very anchor that weighs us down.

Then there are the Phenomenologist, those mystical followers of Husserl, who assert that if we would only objectively study consciousness itself (i.e., the act of perceiving and attaching meaning), then we would unlock the secrets to truth/reality.

The problem, however, is that we must use consciousness in order to do this, and how exactly does one objectively study consciousness with their own consciousness? It is like the wings of Icarus: the closer we get to the sun, the more the wax melts away.

Finally, there are the Nominalists, those dastardly followers of Nietzsche (and his bastard philosophic children of the 20th century), who assent to the reality of the "demon" but choose to localize it in societal institutions (family, religion, tradition, custom, government, etc.) and internalize it in the self. Life is an illusion controlled by others, and the only thing to do is to wrest control from them and give it to ourselves, so that we may make our "real" self according to our own liking and in our own image.

The problem, however, is twofold: (1) We cannot (for whatever reason) function in an illusion, even one of our own making. We yearn for truth/reality, for "the real". (2) We know (though perhaps we lack the words to express it) that Nominalism is simply not true; there are realities that are real and truths that are true in spite of either us or our institutions. We will not submit to becoming the demon, nor will we admit that he is all that there is "outside".

Every single one of these rebuttals to the demon and the dream all hit the same problem (except for Nominalism, which simply accepts the demon/dream). I call it the "non-transcendence problem," and it goes something like this: (1) We know (in some way) that truth/reality exists. (2) We know (in some way) that truth/reality is beyond us. (3) We know (in some way) that we are incapable of reaching it. All of our attempts (and there have been some fantastic and terrifying attempts) to breach the glass ceiling between us and truth/reality seems to fail, and thus we are left here on our silent plant, haunted by inklings and vague apparitions that point us to a place that we can never reach. What, then, do we do?

There are typically two responses to this. First is the nihilistic surrender to life without truth/reality, a position that few take seriously. The other is far more common, and it is the position of heroic existentialism, with its rather pretentious slogan, "Have the courage to be." As odd as that sounds, most people fall into that category. They admit (perhaps subconsciously) that truth/reality is beyond them, but they are still going to strive to approximate it as best as they can. By a lifelong series of efforts, they will be as moral, factual, and authentic as they can (though without truth/reality to measure themselves by, they will never truly know how moral, factual, and authentic they are). This is the default mindset of the average secular person, even if they have never thought about it or found adequate words to express it.

I would like to posit (if I may) a third, wholly different response to the demon/dream, far more radical and essentially Christian in its essence. It goes something like this: (1) We know that truth/reality exists. (2) We know that it is beyond us. (3) We know that we cannot reach it. (4) If we cannot go to it, then our only hope is if it comes to us. The Christian Faith has a term for when truth/reality "comes to us"; it is called incarnation:

"In the beginning was the Word [logos: truth, reality; the primal voice that speaks all else into existence]...and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14).

In one simple, solely Christian phrase, the solution is found and declared: "the Word became flesh," truth/reality has come down to us. This is what theologian Oswald Chambers called the "personality of truth" (131). If truth/reality is merely a coalition of abstract maxims (profound yet dead), then it is all on us to reach them, which cannot be done. However, if truth/reality is a person, with their own powers of activity and volition, then they can reach back to us; and according to the Christian Faith, He has.

"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in this last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, and by whom He also made the worlds" (Heb. 1:1-2).

Bibliography/References:

Scruton, Roger. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1994.

Chambers, Oswald. Biblical Ethics / The Moral Foundations of Life / The Philosophy of Sin. Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 1998.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

The Great Inscape (a commentary by an orthodox rebel)

"[There is] the notion that I have to be something; [the truth is that] I have not. I have to be absolutely abandoned to Jesus Christ, so one with Him that I never think of myself apart from Him. Love is never self-conscious." -Oswald Chambers (from Biblical Ethics, p. 97)

Ultimately, there are only two philosophical positions in the world: either everything is all about our self, or it is all about God. When it is about our self, we can never truly enjoy anything or anyone because we are never truly seeing them. We have warped their mirrors to reflect ourselves, and we have no light to illuminate either them or us. When it is all about God, however, then we can finally enjoy all things, for we finally see them for who and what they are in the light of His glory and grace.

Do not misunderstand. This is not about unconsciousness, nor is it about treating people and things as no better than tools. Rather, it is about making God (His presence, promises, and power as revealed in Christ and the Word) the absolute center of your life. Once that happens, everything and everyone else are not lost. On the contrary, they (like us) have finally found their place, and thus we are finally able to enjoy them (and they us) for all the unique ways that they alone glorify and enjoy God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

(Additional reading)

Romance and Reality (as explained by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

One of the reasons I like Chesterton is that he treats spiritual reality as if it were real. For him, God and all that He is and promised are not abstractions but concrete realities that we walk amongst and through and in every single day of our lives. That life is a story "written by the finger of God" was no mere pleasing maxim; for Chesterton, it was the deepest and most fundamental philosophy.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

(The following is excerpted from his book Heretics, p. 143.)

Romance is the deepest thing in life; romance is deeper even than reality. For even if reality could be proved to be misleading, it still could not be proved to be unimportant or unimpressive. Even if the facts are false, they are still very strange. And this strangeness to life, this unexpected and even perverse element of things as they fall out, remains incurably interesting.

[...]

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple: it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. Life may legitimately appear as a book of science. Life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. But life is always a novel. Our existence may cease to be a song; it may cease even to be a beautiful lament. Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story. In the fiery alphabet of every sunset is written, "to be continued in our next."

Homily 22: Your Little Foothill (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"And they took offense at Him." Matthew 13:57a

Have you ever seriously considered Jesus' rejection by His hometown? Those who supposedly knew Him the best ("Is this not the carpenter's son?" vs. 55) did not know Him at all ("because of their unbelief," vs. 58). They had a preconceived and well entrenched conception of Jesus, and they had grown quite familiar with their conception. Thus, when the real deal came thundering into their lives, they were "astonished" (vs. 54) and offended. How dare Jesus step outside of our conception of Him! How dare He defy our notions and self-made expectations! How dare He indeed.

There is a saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," the inverse implication being that familiarity makes the heart grow stale. That is not true in regard to God. If our heart is growing stale, it is not because we have grown too familiar with Him. Rather, it is because we have grown too familiar with what is not Him, with some cheap imitation and concocted notion. Christ and the scriptures reveal God to be the fountainhead of infinite Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, the summation of all perfection, the source and aim of all desire, and the author of salvation. No heart can ever grow stale by going deeper and deeper into His presence. Staleness doesn't come because we know God too well, but because we have grown comfortable with what is either not Him or less than Him. In this way, we indeed fall short of the glory of God.

The real danger, however, is manifested in Jesus' hometown crowd. It is one thing to grow familiar with a false or incomplete image of God. It is quite another thing to grow fond of that image, so fond that when the real God comes bursting through your life and upsets your misconceptions you become offended by Him. How dare God not be what I want Him to be! This is the same trap that the Pharisees fell into. They stood in the tension between the God they wanted and the God who is. Blinded by their own conceptions, they rejected the God who is. When unbelievers do this, they damn their souls. When believers do this, they stunt their sanctification. They come to a certain spot in their relationship to God and say, "There can't possibly be anything higher than this," and so they take the foothills over the summit, an unfortunate state of affairs that only a God-sent avalanche can cure. Are you small enough in your own eyes to see God for the mountain that he is, or will He be forever your little foothill?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Into the Meat-Grinder: Or, On Christ-likeness and Seeing Reality (a lecture by an orthodox rebel)

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil." Matthew 4:1

The Christ-like life is never a matter of anemic safety. It is a head-on collision with the darkness, often in dry and desolate places. The red-cross of Christ is not to be borne by the fainthearted or apathetic. No naivete or cynicism is allowed, because no naivete or cynicism would survive. One's mind, heart, and senses must be attuned to the reality of Evil and the presence of God. Lose one of those two truths and you will fall away from Christ-likeness into ignorance or despair.

"...led up by the Spirit into the wilderness...." God is not interested in placating our preference for limited liabilities and safe investments. If we are being conformed into the image of Christ, then we are cast into the meat-grinder daily. This is a fact that the Enemy does not want you to understand or consider. Everyday guided by God is a step across the divine adventure, and every step contains perils of enormous spiritual significance. The Enemy would take advantage, however, of our one true handicap (i.e., our literal blindness to the spiritual) and convince us that life is a mere traipsing and traversing from one doldrum to the next. Read the word of God; it makes no such claim: We who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake (II Cor. 4:8-11).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

Homily 16: "...we all go into the dark..." (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"...I fear my lord the king...." Daniel 1:10

We must not abide the doctrines of any false and foolish religion that tries to claim the unreality of either fear or its object. There are many frightful and beastly barricades set across the whole of life, and the fear they inspire is usually well deserved. The difference is in this: it is not about believing that your fears (or fearful things) don't exist; it is about believing that God does exist. The instant that we focus (for whatever reason) on the fears and/or their objects rather than on God, we have gone awry. Even if we are attempting to comfort our fellow man, simply denying the reality of their terrors within or the terrors without is a silly solution. It is the equivalent of telling them that the dark will go away if they simply close their eyes.

We do mankind a great disservice if we deny their fears and/or fearful things for the simple reason that denying the dark does nothing to get rid of it. Only light does that, and the good news of the Christian religion is that the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness is powerless before it (John 1:5). Obviously, the only proper thing to do for those who are afraid of the very real dark is to point them to the very real light.

The servant of Nebuchadnezzar was genuinely afraid of a very real danger, and what did Daniel say to assuage him? Not, "Doubt your fears," but rather, "Prove thy servants," i.e., test the matter. Come and see the faithfulness of the almighty God (Num. 11:23, 23:19, & Mal. 3:10). This is not, nor is it ever, about blind faith. It is about seeing with your own eyes God work in the real world, about realizing the reality of God in the practical minutia of life. It does us no good to anyone (including ourselves) to deny the reality of fear and fearful things. The only good lies in claiming the reality of God and being strong in the real power of His real might.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010