When I was younger my conscience was stronger, or I should say louder. . .
During my first grade year, it was not uncommon for us to bring toys to the classroom. These treasures—bequeathed to us by our loving parents in moments of affection or weakness—provided us with an irresistible opportunity to inspire envy in our peers. When these beloved objects began disappearing at a rapid rate our teacher initially believed that simple negligence was the culprit. Gradually, however, the thief, having not yet learned the subtleties of his trade, began displaying these lost toys and attempting to pass them off as his own. My peers were confounded by the similarities that my newly acquired collection bore to their lost toys, even down to portions patched up with adhesive, or an undercarriage conveying the owner’s initials in permanent marker. Mere coincidence I assured them. They were perplexed, my teacher was not.
Throughout the whole procedure my conscience was a bell that would not cease to toll. Mercifully, I was discovered. Punishment never felt so cathartic.
Guilt was an ordeal for which I was not at all prepared. It made an interrogation of every conversation, and transformed every morsel of food to stone and any joy I would have gotten out of those toys to remorse.
Though I abandoned burglary, over the years I’ve learned to circumvent my guilt, have in fact bested it on many occasions. It’s easy: begin with a simple inner monologue filled with explanations. These explanations may overlap questionable motives by providing eloquent and even seemingly ethical reasons for one’s actions. Whether these explanations encounter concrete reality is a matter of supreme indifference; all that matters is that they are possibilities. This we call rationalization. It’s the best defense one can take against one’s conscience. Employ it and the bell cannot toll. Rationalization has allowed me to walk as a traitor in saint’s clothing.
The apostle Paul informs us in Romans that Adam indicts us all through his sin (5:18). I’m speaking in the present tense because this applies to every moment of our lives. Guilt is knit into the very fabric of our souls. To see this is to come up against a distance between us and God, this distance we designate as God’s holiness, His otherness. Here lies a chasm and a void so profound that the only bridge is Christ. I have no intention of examining the vexed question of the “fortunate fall,” but know this: your guilt is an instrument of God’s grace when you allow His High Priest to intercede on your behalf (Hebrews 5: 9-10).
Imagine a world without guilt…
Lately, I’ve been looking for guilt. I don’t mean that I’ve been trying to entangle myself in any kind of criminal activity or anything. It’s just hard to come by these days. In fact, guilt is vanishing from all of our radars at an alarming rate. But why?
If you approached a legal scribe with this question, you’d probably be told that archaic words like “guilt” and “culpability” need to be eradicated from all legal curriculum. Lawyers tend to favor words like “alleged,” “duress” and “cruel and unusual.” The legal system now exists to provide litigations, explanations and rehabilitations, not to cater to vacuous moral sentiments.
In the annals of science, guilt has faired no better because it cannot be tied to any efficient causal chain. It is expressly the property of sorcerers, magicians and mundane metaphysicians. Besides, guilt soon vanishes when we examine the intricate mosaic of blind deterministic forces that shape us all. Explanations are all that matter; courtrooms are just glorified laboratories.
Guilt has suffered miserably under the “duress” of psychology. The prescription of psycho-analysis has never gotten us beyond the couch. The answer here is an endless conversation whose only definitive point of termination is the grave itself. All guilt is effectively lost within a pastiche of mundane details that assume significance solely because of the pretty penny demanded for their stimulation.
Public trials seem to now be extensions of the couch, massive group therapy sessions, and fodder for talk-show hosts, and parrots on the news. We now have the privilege of watching murderers switch places with their victims as seamlessly as cars on a four-lane highway. Interviewers of such men would do well to flee, lest they provide a convenient opportunity for more therapy.
I think I’ve seen a world without guilt.
All of this somewhat understandable. Guilt, as a concept, carries metaphysical weight. Too much weight perhaps, to stand up in a court of law. But there is a very real sense in which all of the psychological, scientific and legal erasers cannot eradicate it. Guilt is written on our hearts in a manner far more precise and intricate than any genetic code.
In my next blog, I want to examine guilt as an essential part of our humanity, and to show definitively that a world without guilt is a sinister one indeed.
Dr. Gregory House M.D. has a very succinct answer to this question: “nothing.” Truth should never stop at the boundary of kindness. Perhaps this is why I hold his character in such high regard. I have a deep-seated craving to be right. My stubborn will knows no bounds when I’m on the loosing end of an argument; if backed into a corner, I’d defend the flatness of the earth!
Marriage has given me a much-needed tonic to combat this sickness, because a marriage without humility is a mirage. All wordplay aside, a need to be right at the cost of everything and everyone may well cost you everything and everyone. . .
Roger Shattuck, whose literary criticism approaches wisdom literature, has a sobering epigram: “Empathy hides more than it reveals.” It would seem that empathy is just what all the paragons of pettiness like myself would need to reverse our destructive habits. Wrong. By inverting empathy, I’ve tried to turn House into a hero. “Look at the pain he has to live with.” “He’s a genius.” And, most insidiously of all, “He’s just being honest.” But I’ve learned that honesty often intrudes on my need to always be right.
In one of our frequent little spats, my wife and I exchanged harsh words over her grammar usage on facebook. In my estimation, I was defending not only grammar, but the values of education and the very foundations of Western civilization! With an ironic glint in her eye that made me flinch, my wife informed me that the grammar on a photo caption on facebook didn’t much matter, and that I was being ridiculous. Now which one of us was right? I rarely emerge as the victor in arguments with my wife.
House has been compared to many literary characters including Milton’s Satan and his close-cousin, Captain Ahab. Though both are apt, I propose that House is the Falstaff of primetime. Falstaff is a licentious coward and a highwayman to boot. But his wit seems to outshine all of his moral shortcomings. He was such a favorite of audiences that Shakespeare was compelled to give him his own play. But can his wit save him from his moral vacuity? Can House’s genius rescue him from his own misanthropic vices?
The need to always be right and the desire to seek the truth often have little to do with one another. One has pride as its fuel and the other requires a great deal of humility. Truth will bring you up against the limits of your own understanding, and also to the conclusion that many others are ahead of you. My wife consistently remains a few steps ahead of me in matters of truth.
Ephesians 4: 15 is a reliable rejoinder to all of us right-mongers, however, I prefer an exchange between Jesus and Peter (Matt 26:31-34). Jesus, in no uncertain terms, exposes Peter as a traitor, but leaves him to come to the sad conclusion of this prediction himself. What does being kind have to do with being right? I would suggest it is very difficult to have one without the other.
Few of us will notice one of Jesus’ most radical statements. Having established Himself as a master of the counterintuitive, His audiences were left to grapple with admonishments like “turn the other cheek,” or “if a man takes your shirt, give him your coat also,” and most dramatically of all, “you are to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Then there are the warnings that literally turn us inside out, warnings that propel the inward forward with all the force and gravity of external circumstances: “everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Little wonder then that we forget the seemingly small statement, “man shall not live on bread alone.”
From these seven words, I take it that man lays claim to a hunger beyond the impulse to seek physical sustenance. This little saying, uttered to Satan in a moment of profound temptation, is a radical claim about human nature itself. These seven words make plain that we are metaphysical creatures, driven by spiritual forces as well as those of the physical world. This saying would make a fine epitaph on the grave of many a poet. I stated in my last blog that “why” is a dangerous question to apply to art because no work of art is, strictly speaking, necessary. “Man shall not live on bread alone” is probably one of the best answers one can give. Look no further than our technology. We build bridges for speed and efficiency, to enhance our lives. . .and because we live on bread. We adorn those bridges because we don’t live on bread alone. We write odes to nightingales because we don’t live on bread alone.
So, what has any of this to do with doubt? I submit that our spiritual nature will not let us rest. It is the spiritual dimension that drives our questions. Mere survival will not suffice; the deeper questions of “why” and “how” throw our metaphysical hunger into sharp relief. Bread can’t solve these riddles, it can only prolong them.
Doubt as a concept paints many a vivid picture in my mind of fervent struggles. Think of up-hill battles, or a man grappling in the dark with only a small torch to light his way. Conversely, a life without doubt gives me only one stark picture: an animal, led blindly by its instincts and physical impulses. Ludwig Feuerbach tried to prove this was the case by saying “you are what you eat.” My message here is not about apologetics, or cerebral Christianity. It is about what makes us human. Doubt belongs to that group of signposts that point towards our spirit, it flags our metaphysical landscape. You doubt because you don’t live on bread alone.
The majority of my quotes in this blog come from Matthew chapter 5, excepting “man shall not live on bread alone,” which comes from Matthew chapter 4.
If you’re familiar with Robert Crumb, you may take issue with an article devoted to his work on a Christian website. The darling and some say founder of “underground” comics emerged in the 1960s with a series of increasingly bizarre and subversive graphic novels that inspired horror and exaltation in equal measure. If you’ve got a strong stomach and a penchant for merciless tests of self-endurance, you might try sitting through Terry Zwigoff’s feature-length documentary “Crumb.” This reverent and somewhat nostalgic film leaves me unconvinced of Crumb’s artistic merit.
Crumb gleefully fills his books with the kind of psycho-sexual imagery usually reserved for a boy’s locker room, but that could only find expression in the skilled hands of a talented artist. Indeed, some of Crumb’s work crosses so many lines and goes to such perverse heights that critics frequently mistake obscenity for profundity. The Marquis de Sade has received similarly unfair treatment. Whatever your tastes or stance, Crumb makes his home on the fringe.
So, what are we to do with Crumb’s latest effort? This man, who is, for all intents and purposes, a gallant pornographer, has spent the past four years in hermetic devotion to a line for line reproduction of the book of Genesis. Not one “begat” is missing from this magnum opus. Employing both the King James translation as well as the work of the Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, Crumb claims this is a straight-faced effort with as little interpretation as possible. In his poorly penned but sincere introduction, he informs the reader that he does not believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, but a work of men, the culmination of centuries of brilliant collaboration. No marks for originality there, but having glanced through the book myself, mockery and embellishment do not seem to be Crumb’s intent. To the best of his abilities, Crumb has reproduced the entire book.
“Why” is a dangerous question when it comes to art, but it seems apt at this point. The scope and breadth of this book are astounding and perplexing. Many Jewish scholars are already lauding this as a brilliant effort that will make the book accessible to a new generation. All praise aside, none of these panels need Crumb’s signature; the impress of their author is readily identifiable; the men and women are all hopelessly endowed, and no lewd scene is left to the imagination.
I confess I remain ambivalent to Crumb’s latest effort. Perhaps the biggest compliment we may pay it is that it displays Genesis in all its strangeness, shows what we are told is a visual generation, the people and events of a book that is as beautiful as it is mysterious.
Need to see it to believe it? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/22/robert-r-crumb-genesis-cartoon
Critic’s Corner: Don’t call me reactionary! The Latest Evidence for Evolution and How We Christians Should Respond.
The tone of this article is in the title. I’m of the persuasion that discussions regarding evolution, particularly within evangelical circles, have become entirely too political. Put simply, to concede any shred of evidence to scientists in favor of this model is seen as surrendering points to the opposite team, or even as a lost battle in the great war between science and religion. Not only do I believe this mindset to be patently false, I don’t think any war between science and religion exists.
Employing his usual mordant wit, David Bentley Hart describes this view well: “All was darkness. Then, in the wake of the ‘wars of religion’ that had torn Christendom apart, came the full flowering of the Enlightenment and with it the reign of reason and progress, the riches of scientific achievement and political liberty, and a new sense of human dignity. The secular nation-state arose, reduced religion to an establishment of the state or, in the course of time, to something altogether separate from the state, and thereby rescued Western humanity from the blood-steeped intolerance of religion.” Hart writes these lines with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Indeed, there is such a fairy-tale quality to this paragraph that it could be appropriately opened with the line “once upon a time.” Yet, it’s the façade promulgated by some of the leading cultural critics of the day: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennet, etc. My point here is that any Christian accepting the terms of this war is necessarily subscribing to Hart’s little fairy-tale. If you posit a war between science and religion, us and them, you must necessarily construct the same kind of argument in the reverse: all was darkness. Then, Christianity came to enlighten the hearts of man, spreading faith, hope and love wherever it was witnessed. This is also a “once upon time” argument.
This blog comes on the cusp of a new piece of the evolutionary puzzle. Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi for short, is a fossil discovered in Aramis, Ethiopia, that is revolutionizing the way scientists view evolution. The projected age of Ardi is 4.4 million years, effectively making him a million years older than the celebrated Lucy fossil that was discovered in 1974. For the full story go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8285180.stm.
It would be a mistake to immediately hurl stones at this latest scientific discovery. Though the evidence has confounded scientists on many fronts, it still represents a fascinating new installment in the evolutionary trajectory. If you are a “once upon a time” kind of thinker, you will summarily dismiss all of this without a second glance, and more importantly, without weighing or considering any of the evidence. I cannot think of a more harmful witness to the intellectual secular world. Am I recommending that we compromise our faith? May it never be! What I am asking is that we be informed rather than reactionary.
I’ll close with the verse that has become my personal apologetic credo: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)”
Critic’s Corner: The Lessons of Pain and Suffering Part II – An Unsatisfactory Answer
If I offered a “satisfactory” answer to the problem of evil I’d be a fraud, naïve at best, and a tyrant at worst. So, whatever its deficiencies, my answer does at least have the ethical benefit of being unsatisfactory.
Instead, I have Ivan Karamazov. Initially, this may not sound like much of an answer because Ivan is a literary character, a phantom of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s mind. To make matters worse, Ivan is an avowed atheist whose tale of the “Grand Inquisitor” presents a scathing indictment of Christianity from which many critics have asserted Dostoevsky was never able to recover. But my answer lies with him because I have never recovered from Ivan’s outrage. Let me explain.
The Brothers Karamazov is a book from which few save the most decadent hedonist might hope to escape unscathed. Grand as the Grand Inquisitor section is, it is preceded by an even more powerful chapter known simply as “Rebellion.” Here, Ivan confronts his brother Alyosha (a monk in training and the novel’s paragon of virtue) with a mosaic of cruelty, describing in graphic detail the actions of Turkish soldiers towards infants and their mothers. The evil that Ivan recounts serves no apparent purpose; it is gratuitous, excessive, and banal. Ivan is emphatic that there is no system or rubric under which these tortures may be filed, no higher purpose to which they may possibly contribute.
His rage is reserved for Christ because in the atonement lies the payment and ultimate redemption of such actions. But Ivan does not want redemption: “You see, Alyosha, perhaps it may really happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer: ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ But I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I want to protect myself and renounce that harmony altogether.” The theologian David Bentley Hart has discerningly pointed out that only a Christian could come up with such an objection.
I confess, I remain defenseless against Ivan’s litany because I think his realization of Christ’s radically transformative work on the cross is one that few of us posses. What took place on that piece of wood was the most dramatic act of affirmation conceivable; in spite of every one of those wicked deeds, Christ said “yes” to humanity’s redemption. Ivan’s intellect would not allow him to overlook the cost of the cross, and neither should ours. We must confront the callous catalogue of cruelty that Ivan bequeaths to us because we may be confident that everything he records and more was visited upon Jesus Christ as He paid for our redemption.
I close with what I think may well be the most fearful and mysterious passage in all of Scripture: “But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days. And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. (Is 53: 10)”
Not long ago, I was speaking with a friend who confided in me that he no longer believed in God. When I pressed him on why, his response was alarmingly precise and candid: “My friend Stephen died.” It was a car accident and it happened two years ago; Stephen left an indelible mark on all of those who had the privilege of knowing him.
In her sophomore year, my wife lost her best friend; he had taken his own life, leaving behind his mother, two siblings and a slew of friends all filled with anger, confusion and broken hearts.
Few things are as insidious as a “rational” explanation of why things like this happen every day; if you’ve lost someone or something, a sermon on why the ultimate justice and sovereignty of the Creator remain unmoved is liable to provoke rage rather than comfort.
My training is in philosophy, and I’ve spent the entirety of my undergraduate years steeped in explanations of why there is evil in the world, and I’m here to tell you that your feelings matter. It matters that the second law of thermodynamics bothers us, that the universe is eroding. It matters that the poet William Blake saw a sickness in a rose—the flower that, for many, has become the emblem of beauty—“O Rose, thou art sick./ The invisible worm/ That flies in the night/ In the howling storm/ Has found out thy bed/ Of crimson joy,/ And his dark secret love/ Does thy life destroy.” This same worm, I suspect, is what the philosopher Albert Camus finds in man’s heart when he opens his meditation on the problem of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus.
In Scripture, David fills the Psalms with his immitigable wrath about injustice and suffering. Job’s unremitting pain finds no sympathy even with his friends. Indeed, we can trace a bloody trail all the way back to Cain, who inaugurated post-Edenic family relations by murdering his brother.
I close with Psalm 88: 10-12. These verses are rendered all the more moving because their author would not yet have had a conception of paradise. Yet they undoubtedly point toward both a future redemption and resurrection: “Wilt Thou perform wonders for the dead? Will the departed spirits rise and praise Thee? Will Thy loving kindness be declared in the grave, Thy faithfulness in Abaddon? Will Thy wonders be made known in the darkness? And Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?”
First and foremost, this blog represents a small but impassioned plea for a more robust defense of the Christian faith from the general critic. Who is this “general critic” of whom I speak? You are. Every one of us is a critic whether we like it or not. Though many of us lack the professional poise and subtlety of the trained writers that appear in the columns of the “New Yorker” and the “Economist,” we exercise the same mental muscles that these men do when we pass judgment on the latest movie, album or political policy passed by congress. How many of us didn’t have an opinion on Kanye West’s congratulatory remarks toward Taylor Swift?
My name is Cameron McAllister and I’m a new staff writer at collegeHFC.org. This is the first of what will become a weekly blog covering various topics ranging from classic issues such as the problem of evil to discussions on the efficacy of online ministries such as the ones you see on this site. The blog will be interactive and your comments, challenges and general critical interaction are both welcome and encouraged.
Though I want you to be unhindered in your self-expression, I will be monitoring the comments. Constructive criticism and rigorous discussion are both encouraged, however any kind of abusive or hostile remarks will not make the final cut. Occasionally, I may weigh in on the discussion, but my hope is that it will be carried on by you the viewer. The blog will constitute my main contribution and thus I effectively surrender the spotlight to you.
If a particular discussion interests you deeply and you would like to continue on the same topic you may email me, and I will be more than happy to accommodate you.
Also, we want to keep this interesting and the only way to do that is for you to tell me what you want to discuss. So, email your topics to me and I’ll begin the necessary research.
