The Perils of General Revelation

General revelation--the way God reveals himself in nature--is an idea near to my heart. As an ardent outdoor amateur, I revel in the glory of a mountain sunset, a high alpine ridge, a herd of elk spotted from above, the great force of a descending river. 

The topic of general revelation has been much in my mind, lately, given that the first unit I teach each year to my juniors is on nature writing. The first quote we look at together is a famous one by the naturalist and conservationist, John Muir: "Man needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."

I find this a fitting place to begin because it is both beautiful and misleading. Concerning the beauty, Muir is absolutely right to reject mere utility; we may not need beauty in the same way we need bread--no one has ever died for lack of sunrises--but we do need beauty to live a fully human existence. (More on this in another post.) Muir is doubtless riffing off of Christ's famous line in the desert temptation that "man shall not live by bread alone." There must be more to this life than meeting the demands of the body. 

Muir is also right that we need and healing and enlivening strength. In a great paradox, we are constantly worn down and emasculated by the comforts of this world. Our rest--watching TV and eating crap--is not restful and restorative. We are being killed by our own material wealth. (More on this later, as well.)

Muir is wrong, though, in another important respect. After we talk about utility and its emptiness and establish that Muir is right about the beauty part of his quote, the question I ask my students is who has agency in this quote? Who is doing the doing? The answer of course is nature. It is nature that can heal and give strength to body and soul. 

But nature has no agency. Nature's power, if it can be said to exist, has to be derivative. And this is where Muir goes off course. If this restoration can come through nature it can only come as God wills it through nature. The rest, then, comes from God. Muir clings to the first part of Christ's response to Satan--that man shall not live by bread alone--but forgets or ignores the coordinating conjunction and the world of implications that comes in its train: the physical sustenance of our daily bread is insufficient unless joined with "every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." 

This small example illustrates well the problem of trusting to general revelation. Of itself, general revelation is incomplete. It is a partial view of the truth, "like," in the words of a song I still like too much, "looking through a fogged mirror." The mirror is fogged because of our sin and the brokenness of the world we now behold. And while this world still contains and speaks to God's all-encompassing glory, the fullest picture we must behold is not this marred cosmos but the perfection of God himself in the face of Christ. 

Much more on this to come.   

Mortal Insufficiency

My last Gilead post at least until I reread it in another year or two. This passage is so remarkable that I recommend not even reading what I write further down. 

There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us an only child, and this has to be true. "He will wipe the tears from all faces." It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave--that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.

The sublime beauty of this book overpowers me. I don't remember this passage landing with as much weight the first time I read the book. I wasn't much of a reader back then and tended to treat reading as conquest more than absorption. 

I think part of the reason, too, that it didn't land is that I did not love this world the way I do now. In other words, I never felt my mortal insufficiency to the world, only it's own towards me. Love of the world is a fraught thing for a Christian. I exchanged emails with a friend this week on the temptation of pantheism. It is real and especially so for people who love the outdoors like I do. 

But the fear of pantheism shouldn't lead us into the opposite error of denying the splendor and beauty (more than we can bear), the God-hauntedness, the very groaning of creation. It, like us, waits for redemption. It, like us, is marred by sin. It, like us, will be made new. Christ came because he so loved the world, as my son memorized when he was not yet three. I have no reason to think that love confined simply to humans.

A Soldier of the Great War

I am currently reading through Mark Helprin's novel A Soldier of the Great War, an epic take on the life of Alessandro Giuliani, the son of a wealthy Roman lawyer who becomes a soldier and then a professor of aesthetics. Beyond that, I am not too sure what happens. I am on page 300 of over 800 so there is still some work to do. 

The book is my sanity read. Teaching can be so all-encompassing that I have to work hard to maintain time for other reading projects. Generally speaking, my brain is also taxed at the end of the day to the point that a theological tome sounds daunting. Therefore, the novel. I also love being swept up in a story, not reading for scholarly ends or to determine What This Means About the World, but simply to lose myself in the story and let the prose wash over me.

Here is an excerpt from the book, a conversation Alessandro has with an unnamed fellow soldier  Helprin calls the Guitarist while awaiting an attack from the Austrians in a trench. They are talking about the prospect of the afterlife, a matter on which Alessandro is dubious:

The Guitarist thought. "You mean, if there's something on the other side of the fence?"
"Yes."
"I don't know. All logic says no, but my wife just had a baby boy--I've never seen him. Where did he come from? Space? It isn't logical at all, so who cares about logic."
"It takes a lot of balls to risk the hope, doesn't it."
"It does. I have the feeling that I am sure to be punished for the presumption, but I've already had the bad luck to have been a musician and a soldier, so maybe I'll get a break. Music," the Guitarist continued, with affection, "is the one thing that tells me time and time again that God exists and that He'll take care. Why do you think they have it in churches?"
"I know why they have it in churches," Alessandro replied.
"Music isn't rational," the Guitarist said. "It isn't true. What is it? Why do mechanical variations in rhythm and tone speak the language of the heart? How can a simple song be so beautiful? Why does it steel my resolution to believe--even if I can hardly make a living."
"And being a soldier?"
"The only halfway decent thing about this war, Alessandro, is that it teaches you the relation between risk and hope." 
"You've learned to dare, and you dare to believe that someday you're going to float like a cloud."
"If it weren't for music," the Guitarist answered, "I would think that love is mortal. If I weren't a soldier, I might not have learned to stand against all odds." He took a deep breath. "Well, that's all very fine, but the truth is I just don't want to be killed before I see my son" (283).

The Guitarist died when Alessandro's position was overrun by the Austrians at the end of the summer.

Snapshot from Parenting: A Toddler Gardens

The other night I was watching the kids while Clara worked. Ellie was taking a nap and Owen and I were outside playing. Owen is a worker, just like his mom. We spent a chunk of time in the front yard where he was mowing with his lawnmower. He chastised me for not mowing, but in my defense I had mowed the night before with my lawnmower. Though I don't mind looking the fool for my kids, pushing a lawnmower around my front yard without turning on the engine to amuse my son is just a bit too far. After mowing to his satisfaction he went through our yard and picked up all of the sticks to put in a wood chipper (he hands them to me and I make a buzzing noise). From there we moved to the backyard.

"Will you rake with me daddy?"

"Sure, buddy, let me go check on your sister first."

I went upstairs and Ellie was awake so I grabbed her and headed back down. When we got to the backyard Owen was working with his rake up close to the house in a spot that sees no sun throughout the year and therefore has no grass. He was raking the loose dirt into a pile and had grabbed his wagon and shovel out of the shed. I had watched him maneuver it out from the upstairs window. He then set about scooping up the pile he had raked and putting the dirt into his wagon. Ellie and I sat in the yard to watch. 

He steered the wagon over to the swingset and began unloading the dirt beneath the slide area. It was 95 degrees that day, and humid. The sun was beating down and his entire head was soaked with sweat. After he stopped getting enough dirt in a shovel scoop to justify the use of the tool he reached with both hands and grabbed loose dirt and tossed it into his new pile.

Of all the innocuous moments of parenting, moments that bleed into one another and are quickly forgotten, there was something about this one that I wanted to cling to. This image of my nearly three-year old son glistening with sweat in the early summer sun grabbing fistfuls of dirt and throwing them under a swingset. The sun on his face, the dirt accumulating all over his body, sticking fast to the sweat. The simple, dexterous movements. The confidence in his abilities. The total focus on a (for an outsider) completely silly task. My son's whole body and mind were devoted to this act. He could not have been more content anywhere in the world. He craned his fingers into every nook and cranny of that wagon until he was satisfied that he had scraped free everything he could. Then he turned the wagon on its side and dumped what was left into his pile.

I didn't have the heart to tell him he could have saved himself some time and a mess if he had only started with that move. He'll figure stuff like that out when he gets older. But I am in no rush. I could watch my son empty dirt from a wagon for hours.

A Brief Glimpse at Christianity Through the Eyes of a Two-Year Old

Psalm 8.2: "Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger."

Jesus also quoted this passage towards the end of Matthew's gospel, though he changes "strength" to "praise."

This morning Clara worked so I was pulling double duty getting Owen and Eleanor ready for the day. I had them both dressed and went downstairs to start the car to let it heat up a bit before I took them to their friends' house to play for the day. I asked Owen to watch his sister. I came back upstairs and he had not heard me. This is what I overheard:

[Owen, reading from a Valentine's Day card from Papa and Granma]: "Jesus is so good. And he's here. And he's always happy. Amen. Now, let's sing a song."

[Owen, grabbing my old racquetball racket that doubles as a guitar and standing on the bench we use in the bathroom to help him brush his teeth which he had dragged into the bedroom. Elie, staring at him fixedly.] (Singing) "God is so good. God is so good. God is so good." [Pause] (Normal voice): Amen. Now let's pray. 

[Owen descends from the bench, begins prayer. Elie, still fixated, one leg of a stuffed giraffe in her mouth.] "God, we love you. Thank you that you are here." [Pause] "Thank you that you are here." [Taking a Nietzchean turn] "Thank you that you are dead." [Returning to orthodoxy] "Thank you that you are alive again. Thank you for your smation (ed. note, "creation"). Amen."

[Authorial figure enters the room] "Son, that was beautiful."

Owen: "Daddy, I was singing to Elie. Sit down. I sing you a song."

[Remounts red bench, holds guitar flat.] "I'm playing slide guitar. Now let's sing." (Singing) "He loves us, oh he loves us. He loves us. He is good. And happy." (Normal voice) "Amen. Let's pray."

[This same process, and nearly same prayer repeats three times. The car is excessively hot and the author is late for work.]