The Dirty Hands of God

"How long will You look on? [...] O Lord, be not far from me." Ps. 35:17, 22

An old friend of mine has been leaving much of the faith he grew up with, and it has made him say some strange things. For example: one of his step-daughters (who's about six or seven) came up to him and asked if he would like to donate some money to her church. He asked her why and she said her church was trying to raise money to build a well or water pump (I forget which) in some African village that did not have a consistent and clean water supply. My friend then asked her if she knew God really loved those people, and she said He did. His response was: "Then why doesn't He give them water?"

Knowing my friend, I'm sure he thought he was being clever or funny, though I don't know whether or not he gave her any money. What I do know is that his final statement was ironic, ironic because of its ignorance about God and His main means of operation in the world today: the Church. The Church is made up of all true believers everywhere and is referred to in Scripture as "the body of Christ" (Rom. 12:3-5; I Cor. 12:12-27; Eph. 4:15-16), which means several things, but one in particular is that the Church is the continuing presence of Christ (and thus, God) on earth in human form after His ascension. That is why my friend's statement was ignorantly ironic: he wondered aloud why a loving God wouldn't give people water, not seeing that God was in the process of doing just that through His body, viz., the people of a local church, including my friend's own step-daughter.

I suppose the fact that God doesn't play by our rules (or our logic or "good" ideas) can be quite frustrating. It would seem simpler and smarter for God to just snap His fingers and fix a problem, any problem, all problems, in an instant. But He doesn't. He seems instead to take the long way around: holding off the apocalypse while working out His will through people and their actions. It does seem counter-intuitive, though why it's not is an issue for another post. For now, the point is that what the story of Scripture (and I would posit common Christian experience as well) seems to say is that God prefers to work through things: actual objects and places as well as people and their actions. He does not work in the abstract nor perform out of thin air. As with the creation in Genesis and on through to today, all God's works are gritty and tangible, even if they're often too subtle to be a spectacle.

The god of this world.

We demand a spectacle. We often demand (as my friend did in a roundabout way) that God "prove" himself though some spectacle, some instantaneous feat from nowhere, like He's a magician performing tricks for an audience. It is the attitude Mussolini had when he said, "God, if you are there, strike me dead!" It is the sentiment expressed in a very moving scene in The Grey when Liam Neeson's character calls out for God to save him from the dire situation he's in (which of course "God" doesn't do). It is the position held by the Pharisees when they demanded a "sign" from Jesus (Matt. 12:38; Matt. 16:1; Mark 8:11), and Jesus' answer then seems to be God's answer now: "no sign will be given" (Mark 8:12). No performance, no spectacle, no show. It is not the way He works.

"Let's get down to 'de nitty-gritty."

God's work is concrete and patient, like an invincible yet currently invisible seed planted in the earth, growing unstoppably though subtly. He does not work through instantaneous nothingness but rather though all the solid substances He has made: through flesh and blood, through dirt and water, through all the elements of nature and man. His presence has been marked by pillars of fire and cloud as well as whispers and whirlwinds, and His influence has been felt by thunder and hail as well as plagues of famine and pests and diseases. He wrought His will through the lives of nations and empires as well as individual people, from Moses and Joshua and Samuel to Balaam and Rahab to Peter and Paul. He has revealed Himself, first in words through voices and writings, and then by becoming a man Himself. And all of His acts take their time, from 40 years in the wilderness to 400 years of silence to 2000 years of the Church. He is always practical, methodical, and patient.

The hands of God.

Again, this can seem counter-intuitive to us, or at least counter to our intuition, which is necessarily limited, finite, and fallen, and of course God's thoughts are not our thoughts, etc. However, I don't care to leave the whole thing at the feet of "God works in mysterious ways," because I actually like the way He works. Seriously. I like that it is concrete, actual, gritty, a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-your-hands- dirty affair. I like that the heart of the king (or president) is in God's hands (Prov. 21:1), and that my sanctification is God working through me (Phil. 2:12-13) rather than outside of me or in spite of me. I like that he can work and chooses to work through a local church and a little girl in order to bring water to someone. In short, I like that God is an incarnational God, a God of flesh and blood and earth. He is not "out there" or "over there" somewhere but rather right here with us, in the midst of all of us (Acts 17:26-28), both our pains and our joys, weeping and rejoicing in turn, and all the while working His unstoppable will and way through the actual, everyday lives of His actual, everyday people.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

In Our Midst (Christmas Homily)

"...eyes to see..."

"O taste and see that the Lord is good." Ps. 34:8

The goodness of God is not an abstraction, not a mere dog- matic assertion requiring no more than intellectual assent. Rather, the goodness of God is to be a sensory experience (and not the only one). It is meant to be tactile and fragrant, audible and visible and flavorful. This does not mean that you will suddenly receive complete comprehension of the incom- prehensible God. What it does mean is that His goodness is meant to be experienced in the actual moments of your life. It is to be a point of contact between you and the Divine, a moment of Incarnation, a moment where God leaves the ivory tower of your mind and becomes real in the midst of your experience.

As close as the house you're standing in.

If our God is hidden, it is because He is too immense and not because He is too obscure, like the house you're living in, which is the only one you don't see when you look out your window. It is too close for perception, and so is God. The incomprehensibly im- mense God is in your midst always, and though the limits of our mind cannot grasp Him fully, He is meant to be experienced. He is meant to be met in the moment. In ancient days, though veils and walls kept Him separate from His people, He still had a place amongst them, an actual dwelling in the Holiest of Holies. Today, though time and space and perception seem to separate us, He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:26-28). Furthermore, He has made His people His dwelling place (John 14:23; II Cor. 6:16), a body fitly joined together (Eph. 4:15-16), so that He may be experienced by us as well as through us to the world (Matt. 5:14-16).

Our God believes in making Himself known, believes in revelation and incarnation, believes in proving Himself to be real. If he had not spoken through His word, if He had not come in the likeness of men, then we would have cause to call Him an obscurantist. But He did, so we do not. He has proven His presence (Is. 45:18-19; Heb. 1:1-2), he has proven His love (Rom. 5:8; I John 4:9-10), and He continually proves His goodness. Therefore, ask for eyes to see Him, to see His goodness, and to let that goodness build a monument to His presence in your life.

"I have not spoken in secret...."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Love (Isaiah's Doxology, Part IV)

"He has clothed me...He has covered me...like a bridegroom...like a bride...." Is. 61:10-11

Love is the key. (Get it?)

Isaiah's metaphor for our new identity and function point us to something in addition to that purpose and function: our purpose and function are not simply a matter of duty. Remember, he could have used any metaphor he wanted. His word choices prove that: "decks" means "to meditate" and carries the image of church service as well as a wedding, and "jewels" means any prearranged thing, even the garb and tools of a worker going to work. Yet he did not use those images, images of duty and work. He chose instead the images of a bride and groom, images of love.

You missed a spot.

Now, it is true that a bride and groom have a duty to give, both in the wedding and in the marriage. But that exception only proves the rule: we expect them to fulfill their duty because we assume that they love each other and will gladly give their best to each other. If they failed or deliberately faltered in their duty towards each other, we would feel a sense of disappointment. However, if they did their duty only out of duty and nothing more, then we would feel the same thing. We would feel as if something had been missed, left out. The situation suggested and called for more than mere dutifulness or efficiency. It called for love, a much deeper and solid thing. Love is the only sure foundation for dutiful action, because it alone can keep the fires burning for years to come.

As we adore...

Just as a bride and groom have an identity and function out of love, so too do those whom God has redeemed. Their purpose and function is done out of love, because it came from love. It was Love that redeemed totally and absolutely (John 3:16; Rom. 5:6-11; I John 4:7-10). He wrapped His people in salvation and righteousness just like a groom is decked out for his bride (and vice versa). The groom decks himself (or is decked) out of love for the bride, and because of that love he is decked in his finest, in all that makes the bride happy. Likewise the bride adorns (or is adorned) out of love for the groom, and because of that love she adorns herself with beauty, with all that makes the groom happy. Every action belongs to love. It is a mutual reception of joy, each giving to and receiving from each other out of love for each other. That is the image Isaiah is going for, that God is going for through him. God has decked His people out in the best that He has: a salvation and righteousness all-encompassing and overwhelming. And as He has given His best out of love, so too His people give back their best out of love. To do it for any lesser or other reason would be a corruption of the whole relationship.

...so too we adore.

This is where all the "relational" language comes from in Christianity. Having a "relationship" with God may be an overused and abused idea, but it is still the closest to the truth. We were made to love God, saved to love God, and we can only love Him the same way we come to love anyone else: we must begin to know Him. Such knowledge is only possible through His self-disclosed revelations: Nature (Ps. 19:1-4; Rom. 1:19-20) and Natural Law (Rom. 2:12-15), as well as His word (II Tim. 3:16; Heb. 4:12) and Word (Heb. 1:1-4). We must learn who He is and what He loves. We must learn to listen to Him, talk to Him, and spend time with Him. If we are to love God, then we must know God, and if we are to know God, then we must immerse ourselves in His revelations. Spend your time amongst Nature and its beauty. Spend your time studying virtue and truth. Above all, spend your time in His word, learning from His Spirit (I Cor. 2:6-12) and His Son. From that soil your knowledge will grow, and from that your love will grow, and from that and that alone will your activity grow, for truth is the foundation of love, and love is the foundation of life.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Grounds of Faith (Central Things, Part 3)

"To the law and to the testimony! If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them...and they shall look unto the earth and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness." Is. 8:20-22

The foundation of faith is not in hunches but in revelation, in the divine communique between the Creator and His creatures. This is a fact that is often missed. Too often, well-intended religious and secular types paint faith as the outgrowth of sincere, strong emotional leanings, certain of the emotion but vague in its object. Real faith, however, real Christian faith, is quite the opposite: its object is sure, though its emotions may rise and fall with the tide. Faith is not haphazard. The outskirts of the individual life may seem haphazard, but the core of faith is stable because it rest upon a stable thing: the revelations of God. "Thus saith the Lord" is the bedrock of belief, not "I feel strongly about this."

Now, the revelations of God are not merely petrified statements. They are living realities. I do not mean that they change (for God does not change: Num. 23:19; Heb. 1:10-12; James 1:17), but that they are not static, dead things. Rather, they are dynamic, living things. Their substance is constant and active, and thus to come into their presence is to step into the furnace; you cannot walk away unaffected. For example: God's two main forms of revelation are His word and His Son (Heb. 1:1-3), neither of which are dead things (Heb. 4:12; Rev. 1:18). In addition, both the word and the Word are sources of "light" (Ps. 119:105; John 1:4-5, 9), which means that they are sources of illumination, clarity, and guidance. To come into their presence is no empty thing. It is literally an en-lighten-ing.

To accept God's word and Word, to hear and believe what they say, what they reveal, what He reveals, is no mere intellectual assent. It is to be filled with the life and light and (consequently) peace of God. Our faith has found a resting place, not in device or creed, but in the everliving words of the Everliving One. Inversely, to be without God's illumined and illuminating words, to have no solid anchor for the flittering inconsistencies of solely emotional faith, is to be "driven to darkness," away from God's living truth and into madness and despair.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

The Heavenly Vision (The Gospel According to Isaiah, Part 1)

"...I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up...." Is. 6:1

No man comes unto God unless He draws him unto Himself by His own revelation and disclosure (John 6:44-45; Rom. 10:14-17); and whereas in the past He revealed Himself by the prophets, to us He is revealed through His Son (Heb. 1:1-3; Col.1:15; John 14:6-7). By the word and the Word we hear and see and know God. This is the only route, the only way home. Salvation does not begin with good deeds or good intentions towards good deeds. It does not begin with preparation on our part but rather revelation on God's part. He opens our eyes to see the truth of Himself, for only that truth can set us free.

And this is His truth: Who is a God like unto Thee? Who pardons iniquity...[and] delights in mercy? [He is] merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin [but] will by no means clear the guilty. Repent and turn yourselves from all your transgressions, so [that] iniquity shall not be your ruin, for God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Come now and let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. For He is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness (Micah 7:18; Ex. 34:6-7; Ezek. 18:30-32; Is. 1:18; Jonah 4:2).

Salvation does not begin with us, nor does it come from us, for cursed is the man who trusts in man; rather, salvation comes from without, from beyond, from the Lord most holy, for blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord (Jer.17:5-8). We could never know this truth, these truths of God, on our own. The religions of men are full of retribution and legalism, and retributive and legalistic gods. It is based solely on the worldly-wise system of the merits of the adherents. Such things can only degraded into the oppression of the Pharisee or the skepticism of the Sadducee. It takes a revelation, a heavenly vision, a single gleam from the Empyrean Prime, to awaken our senses and clear out the dust and darkness. We have a revelation. We have the Word who came, and the word that has been "written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and by believing you might have life through His name" (John 20:31).

-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

Homily 20: What Did You Expect? (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John [the Baptist], 'What did ye go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?'" Matt. 11:7

The Christian life is full of the unexpected, mainly because life is full of the unexpected. Those who try to fit life into some form of carefully systematized scheme are the first to go mad, because life will not fit the scheme, or else they have to break life in order to make it fit. To remain sane, they must either give up their scheme or ignore entire areas of life and thus amputate parts of their humanity. Most prefer the latter, because they have idolized their scheme above all other gods.

Concerning John the Baptist, Jesus said to the crowd, "What did you expect? Whatever it was, it was not what you got." That is a truth about all life, especially the life of the Christian. Our expectations are always foiled, and whether we are grievously disappointed or gloriously surprised depends on whether we see God or our personal creed and doctrine as the master of life. We all have personal creeds and doctrines; we all have our little ways of understanding and processing the world. They are not, in and of themselves, bad. The question is, when life and God (who is the master of life) upset your personal creeds and doctrines, will you have enough faith to let them go?

"For we know in part, and we prophesy in part" (I Cor. 13:9), i.e., we have true knowledge, but it is not yet complete. There are things that we do know, doctrines and creeds derived truly and accurately from Reason and Revelation, truths about life and God. However, no matter what we do know, we do not know it all, and the sooner that we realize and accept our limitations, the happier we will be. The man who tries to mount the insurmountable, to cross the infinite ocean and make it finite, he is the one who grows weary and mad with life. He is attempting to be Creator when he is merely creature, and he will find himself unable to take the strain.

Our schemes and plots, creeds and screeds ultimately do not matter. Our relationship with the One who is above all schemes does. Real knowledge exists, and it is wonderful to find; but it is never complete in this life, and every time we claim that it is, even on some tiny area of life, we make ourselves god of that tiny area. Can we allow ourselves to be small enough to see that God is God? Life will be a confusion and terror until we do.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Homily 10: Signposts and Shadows (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. But my people would not hearken unto my voice, and Israel would have none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lusts, and they walked in their own counsels." Ps. 81:10-12

God will give you your heart's desire; and if you will not have Him, then you will have what is less than Him. If you will not have the vacation at the beach, then you will have the mud in the slums. There is nothing else. There is nothing higher than God. All else is a mere copy or shadow, a signpost meant to point to the Source. Woe unto you if you confuse the two! The instant that we take the shadow for the substance, divorcing the two, the shadow loses what life it had. It withers and dies like a flower plucked from the earth.

The things of this world are real, and their glory and beauty are real. However, their reality, glory, and beauty are all a product of and dependent on the Reality, Glory, and Beauty of God. They are sparks shed from His infinite flame, and what fire they have dies quickly. Thus, they can never satisfy, though many pitiful idols have been made out of their smoldering remains. They were never meant for worship; their purpose is to point to the true Object of worship. Like the moon reflects (and therefore implies) the sunlight, so too the things of existence reflect (and imply) the God who is there (Romans 1:19-20). They are to be enjoyed, but only because of what they reveal of God. Any other consideration (no matter how initially innocent) will lead us astray.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

Image and Incarnation (an orthodox rebel's continued defense of art)

A stir has been raised about this seemingly innocuous cartoon that is meant to contrast the difference between really "following" Jesus and our society's weak understanding of "following". 

What has caused an uproar is not the message of the cartoon but rather the cartoon itself. Christians who read the 2nd commandment as forbidding all representations of Jesus/God are calling foul over the cartoon's apparent graveness. The blokes at Pyromaniacs (being sensible fellows) have decided to weigh in, giving a very common sense response to the whole mess. Unfortunately, they only succeeded in bringing the firestorm to their doorstep. I offered my own two-cents in the ensuing meta-tussle. Whether it is engaged with or not is outside my control. I have decided, however, to copy it here since it sums up (in admittedly negative form) my own thoughts on the nature of art and communication in regards to God's revelation to humanity.

Anyone who says that all representational art depicting Jesus/God is blasphemy are in fact committing blasphemy by espousing logic that is fundamentally anti-revelatory and (consequently) anti-Incarnational.

The primary modes of God's revelation to man (both general and special) are fundamentally imageic:

(1) His word is imageic.

It is completely wrong to say that there is some sort of chasmic distinction between the "verbal" and the "visual" when it comes to Scripture (or any form of literature, for that matter).

Ask yourself something: When you read the very imageic description of Christ in Revelation, does not an image form in your very mind that matches (or attempts to match) those words? What about the imagery of OT prophecies? Or the Psalms? Or the OT historical narratives? Or the Gospel stories about Jesus? Does not your mind form images by the very reading of the words? Of course it does; that his how our minds work: they are image making machines, especially when it reads the imagery that is inherent in language. The Bible is full of imagery, imagery that produces images in our own minds.

Using your logic in regards to images, however, that would make the Bible itself an occasion to sin, since its very words serve to produce images in our very minds. (Remember: the 2nd commandment does not just say "graven images"; it also condemns any "likeness".) Is the word of God now a matter of idolatry, since its very nature as literature leads us to create images in our own minds? According to your logic, it is.

(2) Creation is imageic.

How does your logic about the 2nd commandment square with Romans 1:19-20, which basically says that all of creation is one giant representation of God, "even His eternal power and Godhead"? Is all of creation (from every bird in a tree to every sunset in the sky) now an idol and an occasion to sin? According to your logic, it is.

(3) The Word is imageic.

Jesus is imageic in two ways: First, as a teacher of parables. Parables are basically stories, which involves using imagery, which involves creating images in the minds of the listeners. Was Jesus an idolater, then, giving his listeners an occasion to sin, when he taught his lessons about the Kingdom of God? According to your logic, he was.

Second, in being the "Word made flesh," Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15). The Incarnation itself demonstrates (amongst other things) that God Himself is not adverse to physical representation in that He became His own physical representation in Jesus. According to your logic, however, Jesus (in being an "image of the invisible God") is himself an idol and abomination to God.

That is why your logic is blasphemous: it denies revelation on all counts including Jesus himself.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

Post-modernism and Revelation in regards to Knowledge (a lecture from an orthodox rebel)

Post-modernism is (at bottom) an epistemological negation: it says that we cannot know or know that we know. The reason that we cannot "know," the reason that we cannot have true and objective knowledge, is because as individual subjects we are bound within our own subjectivity. That subjectivity has been shaped by many forces and contexts: family and friends, society and culture, tragedies and triumphs. Consequently, our subjectivity serves as a pair of lenses (more cynical souls would say blinders) that filters everything that we encounter.

That it filters everything must be stressed. We are predisposed towards certain bents whether we are reading a certain text or seeing a certain terrain. We are always bringing something to the table that shapes and/or skews the way we view things. To put it in religious terminology: we make everything in our own image. To put it in secular terminology: everyone comes with a bias. This is why (to use post-modern terminology) we can only produce stories rather than a Story: our predispositions prevent us from ever knowing and/or successfully communicating any over-arching objectivity.

Christianity, of course, disagrees. It holds that true and objective knowledge is possible and communicable. Post-modernism does not, holding instead to a complete subjectivism, i.e., we are bound within our subjectivity, within the maze of our own mind. Any real communication with the "outside" (if there even is an outside) is impossible as all such communication would be lost in translation. Exactly how Christianity disagrees with this can be stated in three propositions.

(1) God is there. The first is to affirm the existence of God, i.e., that there is an "outside" that contains an "outsider" who stands "outside" of our subjectivity and thus can view it objectively. This assertion is very basic, but it is also very vital to countering the fundamental assertion of post-modernity that there is no "outside" at all.

(2) God is not silent. The second is to affirm the reality of revelation, i.e., that this "outsider" has communicated with us in a comprehensible way. Even if there is an "outside," the post-modernist could retort (quite correctly) that we can never know if this is so unless the "outside" communicates with us. Thus, the Christian must put forward the reality of revelation, viz., that God has communicated with us by way of revelation (both general and special), revelation that is comprehensible because it has come to us in native (rather than alien) forms: nature, conscience, text, and flesh (see Romans 1:18-20; 2:14-15; Hebrews 1:1-2). Note: The form of "conscience" is important because it demonstrates that the communication is not separate from and outside of us. It is a part of us; as beings made in the image of God, we are still capable of sensing the objective viewpoint.

(3) The Holy Spirit is our helper. This third one is often overlooked, and yet it is on this point that the conversation between orthodox Christianity and post-modernism goes awry today. Even if there is an "outside" with an "outsider," and even if that "outsider" has communicated to us in comprehensible way, the post-modernist could retort that we can never truly comprehend this communication because it is we who have to read it, i.e., we filter it through our subjective lenses and skew the meaning our own way. Everything becomes personal "interpretation," and thus everything (once again) gets lost in translation; the original authorial intent is impossible (or at least mind-bendingly difficult) to discern.

There are two answers to this, and both support each other. The first is simply to assert the doctrine of the imago dei and thereby vehemently deny the assertion that nothing is communicable to us. However imperfectly, we still know what is true and false, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly. Any statements to the contrary are trapped in an intellectual vacuum that neither has been nor can be applied to the real, practical world where actual people live and breath.

The second answer is where the final proposition comes into play. It is perhaps by today's standards (both within and without the church) highly controversial, but it is nonetheless doctrinal and scriptural. We must assert that not only is God there, and not only has He communicated to us in a comprehensible/native way, but He has also provided for us a translator for His communication: the Holy Spirit, which (as the third member of the Trinity) is God of very God, and thus also exists "outside" as an "outsider". Therefore, it is He who correctly translates the communication for us, being immediately and intimately with us (I Cor. 6:19) so as to teach us the "deep things of God" (I Cor. 2:6-16). Therein is the answer: (1) God exists, (2) God has communicated to us, and (3) God has given us a translator for His communication. The Holy Spirit is there as translator and teacher to help us discern the original authorial intent and properly apply it to our lives.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010