The Beautiful, the Good, and the True

I was reading recently an article reviewing the life and work of theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (you can see the April issue of First Things if interested). It seems that he organized his theological trilogy (which occupies 15 volumes!) around Plato's three 'transcendentals': the beautiful, the good, and the true. The article points out that to von Balthasar the order of these 3 is important; he argues that the beauty of Christ and Christianity is something we perceive in our soul first and that causes us to proceed on to conversion and obedience.

That line of thinking intrigues me. No one would accuse me of being an artist of any kind; I am not overly concerned about style in clothing, cars, or furniture; I don't like a lot of 'stuff' cluttering the wall of my house. So, I don't really spend much time thinking specifically about beauty, at least not in the ornamental sense. In fact, I am rather put off when churches in particular spend a lot of money on what appears to be merely ornamental. When I hear arguments about how we should spend lots of money on furnishings for a church because 'God deserves our best!', I generally consider that as code-speak by whomever is talking for 'I come to this church, and I deserve the best!'.  I am much more interested in buildings, cars, and clothing being practical than about their being beautiful. Not that I prefer ugly things; I just think that it should be practical first of all and it should not be overtly ugly. I ordinarily do not think of myself as seeking out something JUST because it is beautiful. I can relate to the Good, since moral excellence stands out so much in our decadent society. I can relate to the True and I tend to think of Christianity primarily as the truth about us, God, and how we relate to each other. I tend not to focus as much on beauty, at least not as an intentional thing.

And yet if I am honest with myself there are some obvious exceptions to this. Music immediately comes to mind. What is it about music that touches us? Some really good music has a special way to reach us that is hard to explain in any way other than because of its beauty. Handel's Messiah, which combines great passages of Scripture with great music, is absolutely majestic at times. I listen to it often, solely for its beauty.

The beauty of nature is another example of beauty that moves my soul. When I have stood at the edge of Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park or on the rim of the Grand Canyon or viewing the Grand Teton mountains across Jackson Lake I have been awed by both its natural beauty and what that beauty reveals to me about the Creator and His beauty.

While I may not be as oriented toward a daily focus on beauty as perhaps an artist or musician might be, still I see that beauty has a unique way of impacting my life and how I understand the world. In reading this thought about how beauty comes as a first, intuitive way of understanding God it did make me wonder about how different folks need different types of witness. While I have responded most to things like the apologetic reasoning of folks like C. S. Lewis, others may respond much more to other things. To my way of thinking, apologetics seems to come first; to von Balthasar, it came last. Beauty came first.

All of this reminds me of Philippians 4:8; '..whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.' To say that we should think on the beautiful, the good, and the true would be a pretty good summary of that!

Faith Working Through Love

I have recently been reviewing the lives of Leah and Rachel, the two sisters who both were wives of Jacob in the book of Genesis. I find it interesting that so few sermons are preached about Leah. Everyone wants to talk about the love story of Jacob falling in love with Rachel and working for her father, Laban, seven years in order to gain her hand in marriage only to be deceived into taking Leah and having to serve another seven years for Rachel (though he received her in marriage after one week with Leah). There is little mention of Leah in most sermons, and then it is to remark about her 'weak eyes' and how much less attractive she was than Rachel.

God apparently takes a different view. In Genesis 29:31 we see that God had compassion on Leah because she was unloved, and He opened her womb. What is almost never discussed in church is who those children turned out to be. In Genesis 29 and 30 it goes on to list her children. Among her children were both Levi, the ancestor through whom both Moses and the priesthood of Aaron would come, and Judah, the ancestor through whom both David and Jesus the Christ would come.  That is to say, both the Torah (the Old Covenant) and Messiah (the New Covenant) were descended through Leah. God's promise to Abraham involved all of Jacob's descendants, but the direct carriers of the promise to bless all nations through Abraham came through Leah.

The picture we have of Rachel, while limited, is not very pretty, though she is depicted as being physically pretty. Her jealousy of Leah's fertility is spoken of in Genesis 30; in Genesis 31 she steals her father's household idol when the time comes for Jacob to leave and return to Canaan. While Leah was worshipping God and seeking to win the favor of both God and her husband Rachel was worshipping idols and acting in jealousy.  God shows his favor on Leah, and His promise is carried to fulfillment by her sons, Levi and Judah.

By the time they die it seems that Jacob has finally figured this out: Leah is buried at the same site with Jacob where Isaac and Rebekkah as well as Abraham and Sarah are also buried (see Genesis 49:28-33). Rachel was buried alone at Bethlehem where she died after giving birth to Benjamin, which is about 15 miles from Hebron where Abraham and Sarah were buried. One would think he could have chosen to bury Rachel there since he insisted his own remains be carried there from Egypt.  Alternately, he could have asked to be buried with Rachel. It seems that in her burial Leah was recognized as bearer of the promise along with Sarah and Rebekkah. My suspicion is that Jacob had come to recognize that as well.

Of the two, it seems that Leah was the better wife. In our modern glorification of romance we tend to ignore that. In Galatians after a lengthy discussion of Abraham and Sarah, Paul comments that 'In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.' Marriage is always an act of faith but certainly Leah had to act in faith in order to seek the favor of her husband despite such clear disfavor at the start. As C. S. Lewis has pointed out in The Four Loves, romantic love is never enough to provide a firm foundation for marriage, especially in God's eyes.

  'Faith working through love'; I like that phrase. It reminds me of Leah.

Jesus Barabbas and Easter

I recently heard a Messianic rabbi, rabbi Baruch, teaching about the trial of Jesus. He pointed out something that I had not heard before, based on the Greek text of Matthew 27:17. In that text the Bible refers to Barabbas as 'Jesus the son of Abbas' when Pilate asks the crowd whom he should release to them, Jesus the son of Abbas or Jesus the one called Christ? In transliterated form, it reads as 'Iesoun ton Barabban e Iesoun ton legomenon Christon?'  'Iesoun' is the Greek for 'Jesus'. The rabbi went on to explain that this is in many manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, not all, but enough to seem to be authentic, at least in his view. Here is a link to a site that shows the Greek and English side by side:

http://interlinearbible.org/matthew/27-17.htm

It is quite interesting to me that this man was also named Jesus. The rabbi had a hypothesis on how this may have come about. Pilate's wife had warned him not to do anything bad to Christ because of a dream she had about Him; Pilate knew of the tradition of releasing to the Israelites a prisoner at Passover in honor of the redemption that is celebrated by Passover. Could he have intentionally chosen one with the same name so that if they called out just his name then Pilate could release either one? An interesting hypothesis!

We cannot know what Pilate's thinking may have been, though he declared that he found no fault in Christ. He certainly could have been looking for a way to release Him without appearing weak. But the response from the crowd made it clear which Jesus they wanted: the son of Abbas (Barabbas). Pilate lacked the strength of character to release the innocent one, bowing to the crowd pressure.

The passage raises another question in my mind, though. The crowd chose the Jesus that served their desires rather than the Jesus who is to be served by us. Which Jesus do we choose? The one we can use for our own purposes, or the One who created us to serve Him?  As Easter approaches that is the question this passage raises to me about us and our culture.

Biblical Marriage

Marriage is in the news again. France is preparing to vote on whether to legalize homosexual marriage, and so the chief rabbi of France has an article in the March 2013 issue of First Things to defend traditional marriage. I was interested to find that his chief Biblical argument has much in common with the arguments made by Pope John Paul II in his book Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body.  Both of them rest much of their case on the complementarity of the 2 sexes. The chief rabbi writes that 'the complementarity between man and woman is a fundamental principle in Judaism' as well as in many non-religious traditions and culture in general. The pope agrees, but goes on to ground that understanding in the creation story of Genesis 1 and the way that the Bible makes it clear that it takes both man and woman to fully demonstrate the image of God carried by mankind. The rabbi also goes on to ground his argument in Genesis 1 and to say that 'this suggests that the definition of a human being is perceptible only in the conjunction of the two sexes'. This sounds rather like the pope when he said 'the definitive creation of man consists in the creation of the unity of 2 beings'. Both make a strong case for the divine intention of marriage being a matter of completeness for carrying God's image and passing on that image in procreation. In that regard, 'homosexual marriage' is an oxymoron.

The pope goes on to make connections to marriage as an image of the relationship within the Trinity, which of course the rabbi does not do, but then both refer to the way in both the Old Testament (ie, the Jewish scripture) and the New Testament marriage is considered a reflection also of the relationship between God and mankind. The rabbi does a nice job in the article of showing how the opposite sex is always something of a mystery to us, as also is God, and yet the Bible urges us to find human completeness via union in marriage and spiritual completeness in union with God who is also something of  mystery to us. Both require faith and a commitment to seeking intimacy with that which is not fully known or knowable to us.

This is one of the articles posted online for free this month, so here is a link:
http://www.firstthings.com/

Our culture, in its insistence on individual happiness as the highest good, is losing its understanding of what it means to be fully human. To be fully human requires male and female, not just a collection of individuals. Our pursuit of individuality is rapidly coming to its illogical extreme. I think we who seek to follow Christ become part of the problem when we seek to make romantic love the heart of marriage as that is what the homosexual lobby is also promoting, albeit a dysfunctional version of romantic love. Nonetheless, the romance culture places our individual happiness above our created purpose; while our created purpose builds real love (the selfless kind) as well, it makes much more clear how marriage is for more than just personal happiness. I was encouraged to see such common ground on this issue between both the former pope and the chief rabbi of France.

The Clash of Economists and Cultures

 I am currently reading Keynes Hayek:The Clash That Defined Modern Economics.  The descriptions of the personalities involved adds some color to the sometimes dry ideas of macroeconomics that were debated by these two giants and that are still much in debate today. What seems missing to me in our current debate is an understanding of the limits of these ideas when they are followed in the extreme.

The default of Greece comes to mind here. While Keynes' arguments about raising demand in the economy during a downturn by injecting government spending has some merit, it seems to be oversimplified. For instance, it seems to imply that the government itself is somehow outside the economy rather than a part of it and subject to many of the same issues that industry faces; things like overhead costs, efficiency and waste, and so on. Government spending is less efficient in promoting demand than if the government were actually outside the economy since only a portion of each intended dollar actually reaches its targeted use due to these costs. This tends to offset the 'multiplier' effect of government spending that Keynesians like to promote. Also, deficit spending raises the cost of government. Government competes for consumer dollars just like business,and bigger government raises that cost. If that cost is born by borrowed money, then the interest must be paid for additional overhead and raises the cost of government still more. The Keynesians act as if it need never be repaid but Greece has demonstrated that there is a limit beyond which the government cannot borrow without setting off huge inflation. What is that limit? There is no clear definition of that but we have examples from many defaulting nations in the last 25 years (Greece is the latest, but there was Russia, Argentina, Brazil and others). The cost of government can only get so high before it, like a business, becomes too expensive and collapses. No one seems to have good handle on when that happens, but it clearly does happen.

Some have offered the idea that we need to return to a manufacturing economy, as if that were a matter of mere choice rather than a result of market forces. Many seem to think that the post World War 2 prosperity of America was due to manufacturing prowess when in fact the main impetus was the fact that the war had destroyed manufacturing for the entire developed world everywhere else. America could not avoid prospering in that environment, and we cannot return to that situation by a simple choice. We now have to compete, and many parts of the world are simply willing to work for less money, at least for now. Some who are more in Hayek's camp in favor of letting the market do its work during a recession have offered ideas of stimulating manufacturing without recognizing this reality.

Meanwhile the economists are in no position to talk about how policy changes behavior in other ways than just consumer demand for goods and services. How does it change the motivation to work? Or morality? We have seen the emergence of a seemingly permanent underclass that lacks the skills for employment even in a strong economy, and much of this seems supported by (if not caused by) a welfare society. Once that mindset is established, how does government reduce its 'stimulus' after a strong economy returns? In Europe they have shown that they cannot reduce it until crisis ensues. Our persistent deficits even in good times seem to show that government spending for welfare  as well as the exploding Medicare and Social Security costs lead not just to continued deficits but to exploding,unsustainable deficits. When do we define a 'drop dead' point beyond which we cannot go in spending?

It seems to me that the Keynesians refuse to accept that their prescriptions have limits than cannot be exceeded without severe repercussions and refuse to estimate what those limits are; the free market advocates seem to ignore that we lived in a 'rigged' market after World War 2 and are now enduring the pain of adjusting down to a level that more reflects a competitive world market instead of a rigged market in which we had no meaningful competition outside America for a generation or more. Neither want to talk about the social consequences. The Keynesians don't want to talk about the welfare mentality; the free marketers don't want to talk about the pain inflicted on people who cannot compete in a world market. Neither want to talk about the pain that lies ahead to rein in Medicare and retirement costs.

There are no easy answers. Some pain is inevitable. Historically, war has intervened in circumstances like this when the level of pain rises. War has become increasingly apocalyptic as time goes on. Let us pray it does not come to that.

The Pro Athlete Freak Show

Lance Armstrong has finally admitted what seemed to be the inevitable: that he won his cycling championships by means of illicit drugs and that it was kept quiet by intimidation and the willingness of many in the sports establishment to look the other way as long as they could. This has become the sad state of nearly all professional sports and is indicative of the true values of professional sports.

Professional sports has for many years now had little or nothing to do with 'sportsmanship'; it is not about demonstrating self-control to develop life-long fitness and excellence, it is not about playing in an honorable way to build a life of virtue and honor, it is not about learning the virtues of teamwork and joining together with a team to develop virtue and excellence. It is about winning and nothing else. In the process of subsuming all other potential values in sports to the one goal of winning, it has become a freak show.

With Armstrong, the freakishness was not as visibly obvious as with Barry Bonds, Al McGuire, and Sammy Sosa. Bonds and Sosa especially ballooned from wiry athletes to muscle-bound giants in a very visible way, a way that made it clear that something was amiss. With Armstrong it was less visible but the feats he accomplished were just not believable for normal athletes.  Meanwhile in football we have moved from a time in my growing up when a very large  pro player was 225 pounds to now where 300 pounds is not all that unusual for high school and quite common in college.

Does anyone think that this kind of athlete is an example of good health and fitness? Does anyone think these men should be set as examples for what excellence in physical fitness looks like? Does anyone think these men set the example for life-long athletics and fitness? In their lust for winning at any cost, the athletes and coaches have created demanding profiles for what they must have for a particular position in each sport, and the results are players who will have health penalties for the rest of their lives just based on their body before injuries come into play. Many of them will rely on drugs to meet that profile. Nearly all of them will abandon the positive values that used to be trumpeted as the real purpose of sports, the values mentioned above. When the inevitable injuries are added to the story it becomes much closer to the Roman gladiators in the arena than we want to admit, as witnessed by the rash of suicides among retired NFL players.

I have pretty much stopped watching pro sports as a result. Sadly, college sports are not too far away from these same problems and have been getting worse every year. Sports has always had players and coaches who lacked the judgement necessary to know when winning should be made secondary to higher values, but it has been getting steadily worse in my judgement. And it will not get better until the fans start to walk away.

The Grand Miracle

It is December 24 as I write this and I find myself unavoidably contemplating the Christmas holiday and what it means. Christmas falls on Tuesday this year, so yesterday was Sunday. The sermon was in regard to the virgin birth of Christ and how many folks in our world have difficulty with the very idea of miracles of any kind, let alone something like the virgin birth of Christ. Newsweek, in their usual anti-faith fashion, had as their cover story last week an article by a skeptic that was focused on how there are other non-Biblical stories about Jesus' childhood that are commonly rejected and so the virgin birth would also be rejected if it hadn't been repeated so many times. The article concludes that holidays and religion are fine for those who want them, but don't take them too seriously. To that I would say, to borrow from Scrooge: Humbug!

This is not to say that the virgin birth is not an issue. It is part of the Christian faith, and the faith most definitely involves miracles. As C. S. Lewis has said, it is indeed one Grand Miracle. Christmas,to me, gives us a glimpse of that thing that Lewis calls the Grand Miracle: the Incarnation of Christ. However, it is not the Virgin Birth that is the heart of that Grand Miracle. The Virgin Birth strikes me as primarily the pathway or mechanism. The miracle itself is much bigger than that, and those who gag at the idea of the Virgin Birth seem to me to have missed the point. For the God of the universe, who is outside of nature and beyond nature to take on flesh and enter into His own creation to make Himself known, and not just to make Himself known but to experience death in order to conquer death, that is a far greater miracle than for a virgin to conceive. Lewis calls this taking on of flesh, the Incarnation, the Grand Miracle because all the other miracles of the Bible either point to this, demonstrate it, or result from it. It is the heart of the issue. God became man to rescue man and to make God known. That is the specifically Christian miracle. Other religions have the occasional healing or other miracle here and there, but nothing like this. And the resurrection of Christ, which is rightly a matter of great focus in Christianity, depends on this Grand Miracle.

The virgin birth is, of course, consistent with this matter of the Incarnation of Christ. That God would come into this world through a pure vessel and would be different from all other men is required. But that is not the main issue. The issue is whether there is in fact someone much greater than nature, someone who is outside of the natural world and yet enormously concerned about this world and its people. And the issue then is whether that Someone did in history step into this world to save us from ourselves.

This is much greater than simply a virgin birth. Coming by means of a virgin birth is a small matter in this context. To reject Christianity based on a virgin birth seems to me rather like rejecting the idea of freedom and democracy because you don't like the foreign policy of America. It misses the point. If you are to reject something it should at least be on the basis of its central teaching.

That entire story of the Incarnation is what Christmas celebrates. It is indeed a Grand Miracle. In the midst of the tragedies of the world around us it reminds me that Christ also experienced tragedy and overcame it as a foretaste of putting tragedy behind us for good. And so I get a small glimpse of the Grand Miracle each year at Christmas. I hope you do as well. Merry Christmas!