Soren's Song (Switchfoot)

"Sooner Or Later (Soren's Song)"

Come back and haunt me
Follow me home
Give me a motive
Swallow me whole

They say I've lost it
What could I know
When I'm but a mockery?
I'm so alone

Sooner of later you'll find out
There's a hole in the wall

Today is ours
Condemned to be free
Free to keep breathing
Free to believe

I look to find you
Down on my knees
Oh God, I believe!
Please help me believe

Sooner or later they'll find out
There's a hole in the wall
Sooner or later you'll find out
That you'll dream to be that small

I'm a believer, help me believe

I gave it all away and lost who I am
I threw it all away
With everything to gain
And I'm taking the leap
With dreams of shrinking
Yeah, dreams of shrinking

Kate Perry Faith

Kate Perry’s “Hot and Cold” makes me feel like I’m shopping in Express. (This is not a good thing.) However, Kate has taught me a lot. For instance, I owe my new understanding the nature of loathing to her. Let it not be said that I withhold credit from those who deserve it.

For months, I happily put “Hot and Cold” in the category of “Trash” and either rolled my eyes or laughed snobbishly whenever I heard it. Now, I can still laugh, but it has to be humble and sheepish laughter. This is because, honestly, my faith is little more than a flimsy, Kate Perry “Hot and Cold” type of faith.

Cause you’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in then you’re out
You’re up then you’re down
You’re wrong when it’s right
It’s black and it’s white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
(you) You don’t really want to stay, no
(but you) But you don’t really want to go-o  

Ouch.

I think that almost sums up the strength of my commitment to Jesus right now. It’s one thing to read “ye of little faith” in the Bible and feel a slight stab of remorse, but it’s quite another to ridicule Kate Perry and then realize that she’s actually talking about you. Talk about humiliation. But, if that’s what it takes to wake me up, then bring it on. All truth is God’s truth, and even “Hot and Cold” can be a sanctification tool. 

Clothing the Invisible Man

Clothing the Invisible Man

Words are to thoughts what clothing is to the Invisible Man. They give invisible concepts shape and texture so that people can catch glimpses of ideas and ponder them. When clothed in words, thoughts become communicable. In one way or another, words seem to be responsible for the way humans understand every question of any importance at all. The assumption, then, is that words (or language) and truth are tied to one another. But are they really? Can words tell the truth about things? What about invisible things? What about God? Of what value is language to religious thought and experience?

All religions, as they use words to communicate, provide some way to understand the connection between language and truth. The question of language may be one of the most important questions a religion answers, possibly because religions themselves are Invisible Men which require words to make sense of them. Or perhaps the essence of religion lies in what cannot be verbalized.

In this essay, I will try (by making use of language, of course) to compare the Zen Buddhist and Christian positions on the relationship between words and truth. Are their views compatible? Are their understandings roughly the same or irreconcilably different? After describing the Zen and Christian understandings of this question, I will argue that despite extensive similarities, Zen and Christianity differ on essential points.

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It's Raining

I just got back to my room after a few hours in the library. It’s been raining all afternoon, and I’ve scurried across campus like a half-drowned rat twice already. When I left the library just now I was grumbling to myself that I had to squelch my way through the rain yet again…my clothes were still damp from the previous walk, and I was a little mad about it not being cold enough to snow.

In that state of mind I started across O’Neill Plaza. After just a few steps, the St. Ignatius bell started ringing - it was five o’clock. The bell took me by surprise, and I looked up…

I suddenly realized that I was walking through a dark and stormy night. A real one. (Though, you must know that by “real” I mean something along the lines of “straight out of a story.”) Where was Miss Marple, or Dr. Watson, or Tintin, or any of the other immortal characters who haunt nights such as these? Surely there were banshees lurking about. At the very least a few gruff, trench-coated men pursuing some diabolical end must be about to round the corner of Gasson Hall.

Somehow, that bell transformed my understanding of the rain, the evening, and myself. I didn’t really expect Sherlock Holmes to turn up (though I’d be thrilled if he did), but I did remember that I am not merely one of ten-thousand students madly stuffing my brain with differentiation rules and Greek contract verbs. The walk from library to dorm is not just something that must be done so that I can check my email, change my shoes, and grab my flashcards before leaving again. These things are real enough, but equally (perhaps more?) real is the light mist softening the buildings and trees, drawing them close to one another. There is a magic in the wet branches as they narrow and darken into ebony twigs dripping silver raindrops onto the brick path.

“It’s a nice evening,” you say. “And you had a refreshing ten minute walk. What of it?”

The only way for a walk to be refreshing or for a moment to be meaningful is for it to refer to something greater than itself. This rainy evening in all its sogginess and mystery exists, and that fact begs the question, “Why?” Because the “why” is that God intentionally and lovingly created this very night, complete with rain and bells and fog, because every tree whispers some truth about him that goes all the way up to the heart of what reality is, I have a reason to treasure the water on my face and the cozy shining of the lampposts lining the road.

If the rain was a brute fact and nothing more, if it had no reference point, it if simply was (end of story), then it might still make me feel good, but any pleasure I derived from it would be merely a matter of chemicals, endorphins, and nerve endings. And if I was honest with myself about what that kind of pleasure really means, I would sink into despair as I contemplated this deconstructed definition of happiness.

The justification for loving the sting of raindrops and the sound of boots on pavement is that there is something behind them. The reason to shudder with delight, rather than grumble, at the prospect of a rainy walk is that God is real, the unifying principle of his universe is joy, and he is present in the way lamps shine through mist.

The bell is about to ring seven o’clock, and I’m about to go outside again, this time fully expecting to be shocked and transformed by what God has made on a rainy December night.

Dante & Apathy

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."
- Revelation 3:15-16

Theologically incorrect as Dante's Inferno can be, this passage is very thought-provoking:

The sighs, groans and laments were at first so loud
Resounding through starless air, I began to weep:
Strange languages, horrible screams, words imbued

With rage or despair, cries as of the troubled sleep
Or of a tortured shrillness - they rose in a coil
Of tumult, along with noises like the slap

Of bearing hands, all fused in ceaseless flail
That churns and frenzies that dark and tinless air
Like sand in a whirlwind. And I, my head in a swirl

Or error, cried: Master, what is this I hear?
What people are these, whom pain has overcome?
He: This is the sorrowful state of souls unsure

Whose lives earned neither honor nor bad fame.
Now heaven expels them, not to mar its splendor
And Hell rejects them

Mercy and justice disdains them...

To me, this is not so much a picture of what happens to those who are apathetic and lack commitment after they die as it is a compelling portrait of the emotional and psychological state of people who "don't seem to care." If you've been overcome by pain, doesn't it seem natural to withdraw? To become dead to those things which could hurt you? And what is more sorrowful than to live in fear of what injury could be done to you if you were passionate and alive?

It's been said that the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. I'm so thankful for the compassion of God, because it is what brings us shrinking, cringing beings into abundant life.

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
and the day of vengeance of God;
to comfort all who mourn..."
- Isaiah 61:1-2

Lesser and Greater

(So, I’m just a sporadic, non-committed blogger. In fact, I blog like I drink coffee…every once in a while. That’s good when we’re talking coffee, but not so good in this context. However, I am aiming for consistency. Inconsistently.)

This morning, there were ten minutes of the CFC conference opening program before my turn to speak. Since I’m in the middle of a novel about a little boy who sees God’s kingdom because he takes the time to meditate on God’s character, I decided to spend my ten minutes wisely. Sitting in the pew, I had this awesome prayer going…all about God’s sovereignty and total control, with elegant tangents about rest, trust, and faith. I was just about to move onto the righteousness of God, when I heard my name.

“…Karen Kovaka…was there, too…”

Devin, a teammate, was telling a story, of which I was a part.

In that split second, my entire focus was diverted from God’s name to my own name.

Dale Carnegie, in How to Win Friends and Influence People, says that the sweetest sound in the world to any given person is the sound of his or her own name. This is awfully close to the truth for me! When I hear my name, I look up, eager to know who is talking to, or about, me. Basically anything about me is interesting…to me, that is.

In the words of John the Baptist, however, “He must become greater. I must become less.” As interested as I am in my name, and in stories about me, I am called to be more interested in meditating on God’s many, precious names. It’s about being enthralled by stories about him. Rather, it’s about understanding that every story actually is about him…not about me.

Wouldn’t it be great to be so concerned with who God is that “I” is no longer a distraction to myself? My name wouldn’t tear me away from what is truly important.

He most become greater. I must become less.

More Kierkegaard

I love, love, love this passage from Fear and Trembling:

If there were not eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair? If it were thus, if there were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the other as the songs of birds on the woods, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked hungrily for it prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches – how empty and devoid of comfort life would be! But for that reason, it is not so, and as God created man and woman, so too he shaped the hero and the poet or speech-maker.

No! No one shall be forgotten who was great in this world; but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved. For he who loved himself became great in himself, and he who loved others became great through his devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all. They shall all be remembered, but everyone became great in proportion to his expectancy. One became great through expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became greater than all. They shall all be remembered, but everyone was great in proportion to the magnitude of what he strove with. There was one who relied upon himself and gained everything, and one who, secure in his strength, sacrificed everything; but greater than all was the one who believed God.

Christian and Postmodern Communication

This thought struck me several months ago when I was on tour with Communicators for Christ:

Postmodernism looks at the arrogance of modernism and says, “Impossible! The truth about reality is forever hidden from us. All we can do is tell stories.” There are no meta-narratives in postmodernism, and the most charismatic communicator determines truth.

Christians realize that they possess the truth; therefore, they communicate. The existence of truth provides a motivation to communicate. Acts 4:20: “…for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

The one is the inversion of the other.

Postmodernism says, “We can communicate, therefore we determine truth.”

Christianity says, “We know the truth, therefore we communicate.”

Interesting, no?