I had an interesting ad-hoc conversation tonight. Since my mind has been in Wittgenstein-land, when I started a rant about my position on Modern law-oriented ethics, things got ontological. Let me start here: verbs are funny things. They really don’t have any material existence; I cannot really point to “walking” in matter. Yet we speak of it, and affix unto it a label as if it were material. That’s not really my point though, rather just a preface, just in case I’m wrong with what I’m about to say:

Love, if viewed as an object, lives and survives in a “space” in our lives. Hopefully deeply-infused in our motions, thoughts and motives. Love can live in 2 realms: the ideal, and the real (the possible and the actual). Love is really love when I actually enact it, perhaps by easing the work-load of another, instead of reducing my workload. But Love in the ideal-realm is one independent of action. Perhaps this is what my wife is speaking of when she asks me, “Do you love me?” (Side-note: yes hon, I do!)

There’s a down-side to all this non-pragmatic love: that love can be had, felt, said.. but not enacted or lived in re. In fact, it seems to be much worse than that! Love seems to have a dualist parallel, and it’s not hate.. to use Christian language it’s Sin. You see, Sin is the exact opposite of Love in content, but exactly the same in internal form. That is to say, Sin also has an ideal & real existence, and Sin can entirely take the place where Love is to be. It’s a dandy replacer, focusing all our concerns on self instead of others, on an economy of gain instead of an abundance of mutuality.

To say it again: Love covers Sin, and Sin removes Love. They exist in the same “space” in our lives. Notice, though (thanks to their ideal & real forms) that love and sin can appear to coexist, and often they do! The possibility exists where we may have an ideal Love in our lives which isn’t sufficiently expressed, but instead living out specific sinful acts. This middle-stat won’t last long; Sin will take it’s foothold and twist what little Love we have remaining. ‘Tis a nasty brute! But Ideal Love can push Sin out- such is the life of the Good.

Note: Specific to Christianity, Love’s opposite is often described as fear. Fear is a specific subset of Sin, having misjudged Christ’s condemnation over our Sin.. that is to say, if we fear this encroachment of sin in our lives, if we fear the only hope of freedom from sin, then what hope or power do we have over sin? It will have it’s sway, and we will be left alone in our Sins.. (hint: don’t do this!)

..is hard to do?

It seems most of my life is on a project of curiosity — how has humanity through the ages viewed the transcendent realms: the location of hope, of curiosity, of mystery and potential and of infinite fear? Religions deal with this, philosophy like Existentialism deals with this. So as I view these various perspectives and values, I find that Christian beliefs are surprisingly sturdy, and they get pretty-well along with many ideas. In this dialogue, I end up finding a new sense of depth and goodness to my faith.

But that’s intellectual appreciation. It doesn’t really do much for the soul. I can appreciate an idea, but act entirely outside it’s parameters. And that’s where churches get curious. Sunday mornings are filled with squishy songs, and large groups of people wearing their heart on their sleeves, embracing the aesthetics of language and sound (albeit in the form of socially-normative prescribed behaviors). I think a lot, and I’m thinking about what’s occurring instead of embracing and embodying like other people.

I remember asking myself, around age 20, “Do I wanna be like (committed, expressive) person “A” over there?” It scared me. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be, but I was still attracted to what it could be like. Being convinced, being self-transcendent, being energetic, being hopeful. And for a time, I was, or at least thought I was, but it didn’t do/accomplish much. Finding myself no further in life, I guess I’ve regressed into myself again. Given alternatives, I’m thrilled with the person and work of Christ.. I’m thrilled to be with my wife in the face of being alone. Life together is great, and so much more dynamic.

I think what I’m saying is that reminders and motivators for love certainly vary by time, place and person. But what seems screwy to me is the general church assumption that worship-music helps people fall in love with Jesus more. That seems a little weird, since love itself is the kind of thing which multiples itself. Oh sure, eucharist is all about remembering, sermons are all about remembering, songs are about remembering, and Peter said his whole duty was to remind the church of what she forgets.. but there seems to me that sometimes words aren’t enough. Sometimes I need to talk with people. Sometimes I do like my heart on my sleeve, but oftentimes it’s been beat down into hiding with cliche. Authentic love is amazingly powerful, and that’s why I’m thrilled to be married. And that’s what I’m looking for among church-members. Does such love cross intellectual borders? Yes, but not when we’re all reveling in our own understandings. I’ll love you and I’ll listen to your stories about your kids, but I need you to listen and hear me ramble about Sartre & Wittgenstein.. because ya just did.

Mediate Transcendentalism: that’s my new title for the secular approach.

Let’s start the tale at the lowest level though, and tell it through the lives of most of us: the daily worker. I hated my job in accounting, mostly because it was rote, but my interest here is in the fact that we eight would subject ourselves to each other, the boss and the working conditions.  One could explain our behavior through all means and sorts of 17th or 18th century social logic with terms like “common good” or the like. And that is my point: the early modern approach to society was one of a larger-than-self to which the selfish individual sacrifices. This “larger-than-self” isn’t fully transcendent like a Neo-Platonic God, but rather still very immanent: we see everyday those for whom we are to be sacrificing. Despite this direct vision, modern economic secularism advocates indirect sacrifice.. “for the masses, for society, for the Ideal!” not “for you” or “for him.”

The trouble I see with secularism isn’t it’s half-way transcendentalism, as if it’s not good enough, or as if it’s a poor attempt at deity-replacement or something. Rather, my complaint for any transcendental way of life is that no one really wants to be indirectly loved. I especially don’t want to be “loved” because someone, something, or some ideal is telling them to love me.. that’s the late 20th century interest in “authenticity” (thank you very much Habermas). Fully immanent love/sacrifice is direct, personal and soul-filling (and perhaps soul-emptying!!). And despite how energy-taking it may be, it is at the same time never life-energy taking. A level of confidence must exist lest sacrifice be used as a tool for selfish ends.

k. that’s all I’ve got so far..

Paul was a missionary. He went on missionary journeys. He wrote missionary letters; letters to those who needed to understand his mission, the gospel: Jesus.
Now, what can we say about the North American Evangelical church today? Need they hear more of first-generation “Christian living” (which to later generations sounds like moralism) or second-generation “Christian living”, which might actually be more “applicable”?

What is it a missionary does? Overtly, communicate Jesus. Secondarily, covertly, intentionally or unintentionally, they communicate “Judeo-Christian values”. Paul however, saw the *lack* of Judeo-Christian values & after preaching Christ, preached a moral system to clarify what behaviors are becoming of a Christian.
Directly, abstractly, do I agree with such procedure? Sure. I’d rather have Paul preaching morality after redemption than before, and that is what he did. Were I to sit him down and ask him if he was even preaching morality, he would never even agree to such a statement.

Now, bring in the Contemporary Evangelical context. First, the every-man has much of the Judeo-Christian ethic already (relative to the Corinithians, say), so simply: why the Pauline addiction by Evangelicals?

I suppose my question and concern is simpler: What books (generally) “apply” more to the later church than the early church? Oddly enough, how about those which were written to the 2nd generation of church-goers! Hebrews-Revelation. Such a question has already been answered, and few will doubt it.

So why then is there so much emphasis on preaching Pauline lit & not enough of the General Epistles? I admit, I love the General Epistles (potentially for their novel factor), and I’ve never heard enough from them. Practically, there is more content. And I’m not going to say a moralism cannot be found in the General Epistles; moralism exists whereever you seek for it. Likewise, “Human nature is evil: we will find something anywhere to become addicted to, to build our pride through.” True, and for that, perhaps a sufficiently changing terrain of call-and-response in preaching & personal study is necessary.

So why the divide between Jesus & Paul? And more to my concern, why the Pauline unacceptance by socially minded “liberals”, as opposed to a consistent reprimand of Christians for not being sufficiently Jesus-like (by “liberals”)?

I suppose my final stance of Paul, generally, is one of “how to be a missionary in a non-Judeo-Christian ethnos (society).” A fine missionary, showing the tenacity and patience needed, and surely we all face this in “preaching” to ourselves. Yet I suppose I find him to be an extension of the book of Acts (and for good reason!) — akin to the “Books of History” (Writings) in the Old Testament (for our example) than any pure, direct. But of course, this is way too general a statement to uphold for each and every verse; more a generic background tone for the genre than the guitar-solo in the foreground.

Is there a difference between me “following God/Jesus in faith” vs. me “following God/Jesus in reason”? The latter is what people have come to term “making God into your own image.” The alternative is a life of openness (or dependence, as Schleiermacher wrote, though I would say the Scriptures & creeds point to this idea!). But one cannot live in this world without decision-making amongst responsibilities, and for the young & without responsibilities (note: not necessarily “irresponsible”, just a more open & potential life) things get confusing and tough. God is The God of History, not just of our personal histories, but of world history. He can work with anything we throw at Him, but the question is always the opposite: can we handle what we throw at ourselves & can we handle what He would throw back at us?!

So to return to the question: most of us likely follow God passively in our own reason: we do as we think we are to do. The opposite option is to follow God actively in our faith: asking daily (dependently, openly) what am I to do/act/think/allow/follow through with today. The 2 middle roads are to follow actively in our reason: which is to make a mockery of Christianity, it is the least mature position. Or we are to follow passively in our faith: when something comes along, we take it. I’m in this last camp, I’ve came from the worst camp, and I’m yet to move forward toward active openness.

#1:
-How much theology you know (content)
-How much Christian-ese you know (form/language)
=Trouble: The form/content split: You can say things without knowing the consequence/significance. If there is content behind the Christianese, that’s better. But it still doesn’t solve the outside-perspective problem in #5.

#2:
-How much you love people?
-How much you love knowledge?
=Trouble: The world can do these things too. True, there is debate on the depth of “what does the world know” & “how good can the world be”.. see #4)

#3:
-How social you are (not necessarily how much you love them)
-How elitist (my ppl/snobs) you are.
=Trouble: Christians are our own ppl/community (but it’s not just an insider thing)

#4:
-How sinful this world/ppl/a person/thing is.
-How wonderfully God-made this world/ppl/person/my wife is(are).
=Trouble: Both are true. Can’t be a romantic without being a skeptic.

Conclusions:

Too much rationality (note: this is different than ‘thinking’ or ‘logical’, nevermind the context) is as much a problem as too much romanticism.
This, I think is lately a HUGE problem. Within American, Big-Money (‘protected’) Christianity, there is no ‘bad’. There is no falling out. There is no pain to be had or seen. That which is “horrible” is hardly so.

Too much ‘ethics’ leads to elitism.
Explanation: Too much ‘ethics’ can lead to a redefining of what is actual “sin”. Is sin a simple statement of “that which the world does, but not what Christians do”, or is sin “that which any of the world does, and if Christians do it, they sin.” or shall we exit that short-term debate & claim that all men are sinners & sin everyday of their lives. Is the issue even “acts of sin” at all?

Anyone who has read this blog knows I’m a HUGE fan of Johannine lit, and that thanks to the last class in undergrad I took which explained it for me. But in detail, John, being a good shepherd himself, attempts to teach each person to listen to God’s voice (truth) – not just in example, not in knowledge, but in experience – in a soul. “You already know, what you have already heard from the beginning..” He is always calling us to look to what we know, and dive in deeper instead of thinking you already know it, and trying to add on novelties.

Contrast this with Conservative Evangelicalism, which seems to presume Jesus & Paul going around shouting. So in the image they perceive, they fulfill and follow! However, such shouting to the masses is likely not the reality of the matter: Jesus was very discerning, even selective (Zaccheus!) & did not shout or assume all men were willing & able to listen..

John however, followed this selectiveness, speaking to those who can hear instead of forcing ears to be open, or trying to open men’s hearts and lives into conformance, only killing men in the end, creating callous hearts unable to feel or hear the shepherd’s voice, which ought to be known and heard much easier without all this violence..

Now, I understand how all this happened: mid/late modern individuals felt the truth needed defense or modernizing.. that it was an untenable position in the eyes of the masses and needed to be made ‘hearable’ to men’s ears. Sadly, with the updating of this ‘hearability’ or the truth, it weakens the hearability in one’s soul, and even those ‘ears’ were already being closed up by other anti-humane Modern traits and trends.

So what of it all? We are now in a place historically where men’s hearts are pushing against these systemic heart-closing trends, and the most of us who grew up with the half-truth are returning to its fullness once again. To avoid such troubles, what ought we expect in our lives? In our ‘small groups’, amongst our friends, towards our modern cubicle jobs?

Most of us in our 20′s are holding on to some form of identity statements. There’s a set of reactionary statements we make, pushing us from our stodgy, modern childhood & adolescence through our college brains into something called ‘life’ now. Most of us don’t have a good idea where we’re being pushed into, and most of us are ok with just being reactionary. It’s a tad healthy to ‘get away’ from all that was killing us and driving us crazy, but at the same time, it’s not very healthy to not have a solid, grounded, well-explained and considered position or two. Most of us are addicted to reactionism, since it’s just too easy, relative to being responsible & chained down or something.

So what are we to hold on to? What is “what we have heard since the beginning”? Our childhood? The politics and weird social ideologies surrounding “Jesus loves me”? How our parents are too squishy to have anything behind them? Or, our novel ideas which we would say are ‘the beginning’ to our ‘new’ lives as rational adults?

The answer to these q’s are obviously “yes and no”. There’s truth just about anywhere, and that’s the point. Modernism has taught us to learn something, learn it’s place, and them move on from it. That is “growth”. But John’s repetitive writing is obnoxiously incompatible with such a late western ideal. In all my studying of the philosophy of mind and Artificial Intelligence, there’s one thing that makes us human, and it’s not ‘choice’ like The Matrix held up. It’s our forgetfulness. Sure we can ‘learn and move on’, but life isn’t so hierarchical or ordered. We forget (oddly enough, in a logarithmic curve), and we need to be reminded, and relearn not just ‘the place’ but the places each idea influences.

For instance, we are taught to ‘love your neighbor’. (That is sufficiently ‘from the beginning’ as well!) Our first modern question is “and who is our neighbor?” We can learn through someone telling us that we are “to love everyone.” But most of us will not learn such a lesson until they fail to love everyone they meet, and learn the consequences of creating so many broken hearts in this world. This is the repetition we need, for the forgetfulness we bear, and the central point behind grace and mercy shown to another as well as us: we fail, and given enough time, we just might succeed once in awhile.

So back to our small-group. What and how are we to expect our friends to grow and learn? It’s awfully depressing to hear the same issues and concerns each week over and over again, but it’s awfully pressured to feel like we ought learn something weighty upon our hearts.

I’ve never been a fan of ‘a new topic each week’. It’s fickle, and who is doing anything more than repeating their trite identity-building resolutions/reactions anyways? Book-studies are better, and oddly enough, they are more pointed. That’s my point: perhaps ‘small groups’ ought not be focused on the people involved, the times that are compatible to meet, topics agreed upon, but each group have one central goal/theme/recurring idea. “We go to the ‘grace’ group”, or “This is the ‘wrath of God’ group”( ) that kinda sounds fun. The point is to focus our lives around a topic we believe we need to learn, and then to dive in, reminding each other each week ow that has played out in our lives for good or ill, how we forgot, how that could have been useful to survive the week, or perhaps in mildly more intellectual fashion: compare-contrast: each week is a new topic, yes, but how does some societal problem, theological point, sermon this week fail or succeed with or without mercy, or love? This way we learn the depths of God’s truth, love, mercy and wrath. Perhaps even reading a book on the topic, or reading another book off-topic to see how it is or is not shown in characters’ lives..

This all sounds so fruitful to live in the reality of  human forgetfulness instead of in the modern assumption of learn-and-move-on. Most of us will never move on from the Gospel. The love of God is not something to ‘step up from’.. Our lives are not just built on top of his grace, but each brick’s substance is his grace.

This week I’ve been doing some thinking and reading on affection and cognition.. good phenomenology stuff. In doing so, I’ve been focusing on 2 terms: expression and it’s complement, impression. Of course these terms were used in the art world 50 to 100 years ago, but I’m focusing on their value and place in the soul.

Being a quieter creature, I can have trouble with expression. Too much of it from others around me, and I’m going crazy. So impression should be easy for me then, right? To some degree, yes. But when I speak of impression, I refer to direct inputs one has in their life. So, taking an audit this morning, I asked, “Generically, what inputs do I have/allow in my life?” My first response: “very few.”

1. Listening to others: few speak other than my pastor & some in community group
2. Reading: I rarely take the time (though I’ve been trying and starting to enjoy this week)
3. Learning: This directly takes place in the trenches at work, and that is a painful version.

If Impression is a form of humility, what then is its role against (in dialectic fashion with) self? Does it mean ignorance of self? At least not placing enough time and energy on self. And what of the self’s reaction to this? Does it whine? Revolt? Fuss? Complain, “What about me?” “Well, What about you? Self, do you so need the attention of the world? You already have it of the Father & the death and life of his Son!” This is what/who I need Impression from.

Yet I’m unwilling to bow to this. This is myself demanding to push away impression, yet crying out. What is this?! Needing and receiving love is a need for impression: the expression of another unto my self. Why then have I focused on my need for the impression of love, yet pushed away the one capable & desiring to express his love to me – to fill my impressing need?

My day devalues love & the source of it, yet my self cries for it. I need and am unwilling to admit it, to label it, to accept that my need, with all that I describe it as, is precisely love.

So how to convince self? Look & find that needy part of me? Have I just not heard enough? No habit built-in of hearing.. of hearing his love? Indeed all I’m left to do is cry, “Open my ears!” I see well enough, but my ears are closed off. You’ve spoken through signs to this deaf man – let me hear the cries of others & of your love! Turn my will to accept & admit my need of love.

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Is this management not of affection but of communication: impression & expression? It’s hard to manage theory.. So most have sold to hearing with-out hearing: daily impression of reading, fighting to hear and hear. Is this that mechanical and formal of a relationship? What other means of communication are there? Surely reading the rational form of creation, as well as the aesthetic in it and that reflection of deity within man and his role here. Such are more subjective re-readings from the original objective source.. and subjectivity is where truth, love and faith are to reside to have any value for one’s soul.

I hope I’m like everyone else, randomly assaulted by my own memory not only of choices I’ve made, but events which have happened to me which (no matter their insignificance) bring a style of fear and anxiety and self-worthlessness usually called “regret”.

I’ve heard all along (from perfectionists) that I ought live under God’s lead, so that I might live a perfect life here, as an example of God’s goodness for unbelievers; a life of no regret. Aside from the mediate teleology of that idea, I’ve got to bring out a fallacy in there. The assumption is usually that all sin = regret. While this is true in all forms, all regrets are not about sinful action on my part. I’m quite sure I could go through the Bible and my own life and find plenty of even God-directed tasks which turned up regret within the person’s life. Even more, even if I couldn’t find such a list, no one man is perfect to follow God’s leading his whole life. Furthermore, even if one did, there would be regret over being in circumstances where one was mocked (by sinful humanity) for God-directed activities, and that itself can bring regret- focusing on the God-designed power of society to build up or tear down our self worth.

Now, such regret is usually understood to put a damper on future initiative attempts. Certainly among those purporting to always be lead by God, any young fellow would have a hard time stepping forward in action unless he had strong confidence in God’s leading of him. But this is at odds with how God works. Once again, humanity’s interest and desire and rationality have undermined a life. How many of us have, for fear of fear, not initiated an action or conversation.

After this week’s sermon at Augusta’s The Well on Nehemiah 4, which brought out that we ought “build and defend” in a way to use trouble/pain to focus us rather than deter us from God’s mission, I’ve got to wonder, upon each occasion for regret and feelings of lowered self worth, there would have to be a corresponding reality which brings resolution to my fears of the past, and lightens my concern over present fears. Biblically, this resolution is always and forever 1 John 4: a return to love and it’s source. Nehemiah had a similar statement: “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.” And what of the Lord? Is He not love? And is his love not shown towards us?