Tag Archives: Jesus

All or nothing

Posted by inklingz on 2011/01/31 1 comment | 662 views

In a recent discussion with a friend (over a nice 16-miler in Central Park), we came to the topic of science, which is a shared interest of ours. That discussion quickly jumped to science vis-a-vis faith, and my Christian beliefs. I made the comment along the way, that it’s all or nothing for me. If I can’t find a world view that is consistent with other facts, then I must alter my world view. Still, I maintain what I call a “crunchy”, literal faith and view of the Bible. Christianity, is not about good moral teaching, at least not to me. For if Christ was not God and was not raised from the dead, then everything else he said and did is suspect. I think my friend was surprised by this view–but also seemed to applaud it’s intellectual integrity. I do not believe we can have it both ways. It is all or nothing; there is no half-way.

I came upon this from C.S. Lewis today in which he makes, I believe, a similar point.

There is no half-way house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him ‘are you the son of Brahma?’ he would have said ‘My, son, you are still in the vale of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?’ he would have laughed at you.  If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?’ he would have rent his clothes and then cut your head off.  If you had asked Confucius, ‘Are you Heaven?’ I think he would probably have replied, ‘Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.’ The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached egg, when you are looking for a piece of toast to suit you, you may be sane, but if you think you are God, then there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects–Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.

An intimate moment with mary and joseph

Posted by inklingz on 2010/12/23 3 comments | 1,328 views

This birth would not be easy, either for the mother or the Child.  For every royal privilege for this Son ended at conception.

A scream from Mary knifes through the calm of that silent night.  Joseph returns breathless, water sloshing from the wooden bucket.  The top of the baby’s head has already pushed its way into the world.  Sweat pours from Mary’s contorted face as Joseph, the most unlikely midwife in all Judea , rushes to her side.

The involuntary contractions are not enough, and Mary has to push with all her strength, almost as if God were refusing to come into the world without her help.

Joseph places a garment beneath her, and with a final push and a long sigh her labor is over.

The Messiah has arrived.

Elongated head from the constricting journey through the birth canal. Light skin, as the pigment would take days or even weeks to surface. Mucus in his ears and nostrils. Wet and slippery from the amniotic fluid. The son of the Most High God umbilically tied to a lowly Jewish girl.

The baby chokes and coughs. Joseph instinctively turns him over and clears his troat.

Then he cries.

Mary bares her breast and reaches for the shivering baby. She lays him on her chest, and his helpless cries subside. His tiny head bobs around on the unfamiliar terrain. This will be the first thing the infant-king learns. Mary can feel his racing heartbeat as he gropes to nurse.

Deity nursing from a young maiden’s breast. Could anything be more puzzling- or more profound?

Joseph sits exhausted, silent, full of wonder.

The baby finishes and sighs, the divine Word reduced to a few unintelligible sounds. Then, for the first time, his eyes fix on his mother’s. Deity straining to focus. The Light of the World, squinting.

Tears pool in her eyes. She touches his tiny hand. And hands that once sculpted the mountain ranges cling to her finger.

She looks up at Joseph, and through a watery veil, their souls touch. He crowds closer, cheek to cheek with his betrothed. Together they stare in awe at the baby Jesus, whose heavy eyelids begin to close. It has been a long journey. The King is tired.

And so, with barely a ripple of notice, God stepped into the warm lake of humanity. Without protocol and without pretension. Where you would have expected angels, there were only flies. Where you would have expected heads of state, there were only donkeys, a few haltered cows, a nervous ball of sheep, a tethered camel, and a furtive scurry of barn mice.

Except for Joseph, there was no one to share Mary’s pain, or her joy. Yes, there were angels announcing the Savior’s arrival- but only to a band of blue-collar shepherds. And yes, a magnificent star shone in the sky to mark his birthplace- but only three foreigners bothered to look up and follow it.

Thus, in the little town of Bethlehem… that one silent night… the royal birth of God’s Son tiptoed quietly by… as the world slept.

-From Intimate Moments with the Savior, by Ken Gire

Trust to hope

Posted by inklingz on 2009/09/12 2 comments | 631 views

Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane–Red in Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption

Farewell. Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands–Éomer in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers

For we walk by faith, not by sight—2 Corinthians 5:7


Reader response to A view from the darkness was notable. It came in the form of email and personal conversation rather than blog comments—probably because of the intensely personal and emotional nature of suffering. It was clear to me that the topic resonated. Unfortunately, this suggests that suffering is as pervasive a part of the human experience as we probably suspect.

In that post I tried to address God’s faithfulness to us, particularly in the darkness—his promises.  Today, I will do my best to describe what I think our role is—how we signal our desire to have an encounter with God. In so doing, I think we’ll see the importance of the larger life narrative to which we ascribe—the robust description of the world (discussed in Which reality, whose philosophy?) that dictates how each of us interprets events.

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One of the great things about blogging, as opposed both to other forms of media and to life, is that you can edit over time.  Once a newspaper article is printed, your only hope of revision is the little “corrections” box in the next day’s paper.  And as we all know, there’s no revision in life. We can die in the despair of “if I only this” or “had I not that” but there are no do-overs.

I doubt many of you know this (I feel lucky to have you read once), but I obsessively re-read and edit inklingz posts. Most changes are for style or readability, but recently a loyal reader asked if I realized I had altered A view from the darkness in a more material way.  She told me it initially read as if I hoped there was something to find in the darkness and later read with more certainty that indeed we will find God in the darkness.

Had something changed in my thinking?

My knee-jerk response was: Of course not!…I was merely trying to more effectively capture what I wanted to express all along. But on a long run this week (where I accomplish a good amount of my thinking these days), I realized something about faith that is difficult to quantify or explain: God meets those who take a step toward Him in faith, in such a way that faith itself is multiplied.

When I looked into the darkness last week, I can’t tell you I saw much but the thick black of a moonless night. But I also knew there was something I could not see and I was doing my best to reach for it.

I ‘knew’ because of the larger life narrative in which I believe. It allows me to look beyond my immediate circumstances and see a story playing out that suggests that each moment is more than just another moment in a set of disparate, meaningless events (see On the (in?)significance of what we do—two perspectives).

It reminds me of an illustration discussed in Exclusivism that welcomes all—of blind men each touching a portion of an elephant. Each one comes to a unique conclusion as to what he’s encountered—none of them able, based on his limited viewpoint, to identify the massive animal.

Similarly, when we see no light in the darkness we’re not seeing the full picture, the larger narrative.

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