Lately, I have been reflecting not just on the value of the internet, but the value of technology in general.  This has always been something that has been on my mind, but it was not given clarity until last year I read Neil Postman’s “Technopoly“.  If you have not read it, I highly encourage you to.  The book will challenge your approach to the world and technology.

Anyways, this “existential angst” over technology – as a friend recently put it to me – is something that is definitely experienced in my life.  As I pick up my iPhone to check text messages, e-mail, facebook, twitter, etc: each time, I feel like I am obeying a master who has total and complete control in my life.  This is partially because I have allowed the phone to have that sway over my life.  But it’s not just the phone: it’s the internet, it’s the social-media, it’s even the e-mail.  Everywhere I turn, I am surrounded by that which demands my time from me, asks me to surrender myself to it, and to give in completely to the ways of technology.  However.  The more technology has attempted to claim its sway over me, the greater there has been a desire to rebel and revolt over the great monolith that is technology.  The more it imposes itself upon me, the more I want to scream in revolt: NO!

Thus, recently, I have attempted an experiment.  I recently decided that, not only is Facebook a tool that demands far too much of my time, but, in the end, it really isn’t all that valuable.  How many videos of laughing babies – as cute as they are! – do I need to see?  How many memes do I need to see?  Is my life fulfilled because now I have seen “S**t women say”?  I think I will survive without these.

The initial post of “I’m leaving facebook” brought both public and private dissatisfaction with such a decision.  And it was with those that the doubt started to seep in: “is this a good idea?  Maybe I’m abandoning people? Am I perhaps offering something valuable with what I post on Facebook?”  But then I said to myself: I don’t care, I can’t care.  The time that will be freed up simply from abandoning Facebook will give me to actually, you know, engage with people face to face!

There is a deeper reason besides my natural desire to simply rebel at all that is put in front of me.  I have been reflecting on the many discussions I have had on Facebook and have realized this: the internet is a horrible place to communicate.  To have a “discussion” on Facebook, for example, is impossible.  The medium demands succinctness.  It doesn’t allow for subtlety, nuance, presuppositions to be declared, etc.  In short: social media doesn’t allow for dialogue, it demands a screaming match.

Blogs, I will admit, are different.  They allow for a reasonable amount of space to get an opinion across.  But Twitter, too, can be a very devalued form of communication (though it can be highly useful for sharing news with others).  But, more or less, the internet is wonderful for discovering facts and information, but it is horrible for communication.

Yet, we as a society seem to embrace it all the more!  We allow ourselves to be overtaken by devices, gadgets, and websites.  Trending websites are leaning towards the more and more banal (Pinterest is the weirdest thing I have ever heard of!).  We are devolving as a society because we are allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by what is ultimately unimportant.

We have allowed technology to become the form of our life, instead of allowing ourselves to be that which gives form to technology.  In short: we are slaves to technology.  Technology is becoming the wave of the future and, simultaneously, the wave of our demise as a human race.  I think of videos such as the one at the end of this post and think: we are making the lives of others worse just so that we can enjoy the latest gadget.

What has our society come to, that we need these gadgets in order to be human?  Why are we lack discernment towards all that is thrown at us?  Why can’t we use the faculty of reason to actually properly judge whether something is good for us or not?  Why do we presume that just because it’s new, it’s good?

The existential angst I feel in getting rid of Facebook is real: I don’t know what to do without it, to an extent.  Yet, I have lived without it before, I can live without it again.  This move gives me the strength to do more, too: to get rid of twitter, and probably my iPhone too.  I’m a lot happier when I’m with people, when I’m reading, when I’m praying.  Why do I need to fill my life with endless distraction?  It seems so inhuman.  The fact of the matter is that technology has become that: it has become inhuman, and yet we treat it as a part of ourselves.  This, to me, is too far.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57367950/the-dark-side-of-shiny-apple-products/?tag=cbsContent%3BcbsCarousel

Why do I bring up this great theologian?  Because what he promotes is a fundamental humility and receptivity towards the whole created order. For Balthasar, to be humble, to be open, to receive is the fundamental condition of humanity.  Only sin has distorted this into a mastering-over which expresses itself in technique and technology – signs that man depends on his own power but not on the freely given grace of God.

If this is man’s fundamental condition, then it must be how he approaches both reality and God.  For, by approaching reality and letting reality be-itself-to-you, you are able to sing the glories of what there is.  By letting reality “be itself” and to accept it as it is to you, you have the openness necessary to grow in knowledge.

For Balthasar, then, skepticism has no place in the search for knowledge, nor can one have a “certainty” that they know all they need to know.  Knowledge grows from letting all that is be itself to you, and, thereby, passing judgment upon reality.  It involves questioning, but not in the realm of “is this true” but rather “what is the mystery contained here?”.  Knowledge, fundamentally, must be based in complete and total awe towards all that is.

By doing so, we not only have the openness to reality, but to the God Who involves Himself in this reality in the Incarnation.  In short: if we want to know the Person of Jesus, we need to have an openness and obedience towards all that is in the world and, by doing so, we have a searching heart and can have the openness to encountering the Gospel.  Openness, obedience, receptivity, humility: these are man’s fundamental dispositions that help him grow to know all that is in all its mystery, splendor, and grandeur.

Where do we get a concrete example of this?  Who else but the Mother of Jesus who was so open to the Word that He took flesh in her womb?  Who else but she who said with conviction and boldness: fiat!  Who else but she who pondered all that God was doing in her heart?  Who else but she who trusted wholeheartedly in the God Who was the center of her life?

In our day to day lives, furthermore, this Marian character is revealed to us in women.  Those who think the Church is against women, or hates women, has never encountered the true beauty the Church sees in women.  Women, really, reveal to us what it means to be human!  That receptivity, that openness, is the true humility everyone – male and female – is called to.  Women carry that receptivity ever more clearly as stamped in their bodies and reveal to us the glory of humanity: to have an openness and receptivity to the God Who loves us and also wants to take flesh in our humanity so that He may bring His saving love to others.

I have realized, myself, that this is not only true in my life, but it has to become an ever increasing character of my life.  I know that with my conversion – and I know not why – there was a moment of openness and it was in that openness that God broke into my life.  I know, too, that I need to continue to re-live and re-discover that fundamental openness I had 8 years ago now.

What, though, if we are not open?  We cannot judge the person who is not open.  However, we must pray, fast, and do penance for those who are not open.  Not only for the sake of them hearing the gentle love of Christ for their lives, but also so that they can, in a more fundamental way, see the beauty of reality!  Openness is so fundamental: not cold skepticism.  To put ourselves above all that is is contrary to our dignity as human persons and puts us at war with the world we live in.  Until we can realize that we are not greater than the totality of things, until we acknowledge that we are of dust and it is to dust that we shall return, we will continue to be at war with our own humanity.  Let us look to Mary, let us look to women and see the true attitude towards reality: humble acceptance of all there is in its splendor.  Let us have wonder and awe at all there is!

in Christ

-Harrison

The idea of holy friendship is one that is, unfortunately, lost in a society where “friend” is something achieved by adding a person to your facebook account after one brief encounter.  Friendship is meant to be much more than that.  I hope your reading below about Bls. Jordan and Diana will aid you, too, in finding and deepening true friendship with others.

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United in Christ: Bl. Jordan of Saxony & Bl. Diana d’Andalo

By: Madeleine Gubbels

“You are so deeply engraven on my heart that the more I realize how truly you love me from the depths of your soul, the more incapable I am of forgetting you and the more constantly you are in my thoughts; for your love of me moves me profoundly, and makes my love for you burn more strongly.”

You will probably be surprised to learn that those words were written to a Dominican nun from a Dominican priest in the thirteenth century. You may be even more surprised to learn that their relationship was nothing like that of Abelard and Heloise or of Martin Luther and Katherine von Bora. Indeed, the love between Bl. Jordan of Saxony and Bl. Diana d’Andalo burned ever passionately but ever chastely from the day they met until the day they died—and beyond! As Jordan wrote to her again:

“…Why are you thus anguished? Am I not yours, am I not with you: yours in labour, yours in rest; yours when I am with you, yours when I am far away; yours in prayer, yours in merit, yours too, as I hope, in the eternal reward? …were I to die you would not be losing me; you would be sending me before you to [heaven], that I abiding there might pray for you to the Father and so be of much greater use to you there, living with the Lord, than here in this world where I die all the day long.”
What an unusual pair of lovers! It is not often that the Church has seen a celibate couple bound to each other with such strength of love, though Francis and Claire of Assisi, and Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales, spring to mind. Their relationship challenges us: how can a love between a man and a woman be so intense yet so disinterested, so detached?

The answer (as for all things good) lies in Christ: Diana and Jordan found mirrored in each other a love for Christ, a desire for heaven, and a passion for souls that matched their own. With this foundation, their love for each other knew no bounds—and it only strengthened their dedication to Christ and their service to Him as consecrated religious.

Jordan and Diana are a refreshing reminder that the complementary vocation to the married vocation, that of celibacy, is by no means a renunciation of love, even human love. They are also a reminder that all of our love must first belong to Christ and then to those around as, according to the vocations He has called us to.

And what do you know, Bl. Jordan’s feast day is the day before St. Valentine’s Day.

______________________

For more information on these two extraordinary lovers in Christ see:

http://godzdogz.op.org/2010/02/blessed-jordan-of-saxony-and-his-love.html

http://www.domcentral.org/trad/dianajordan.htm

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As Fr. Neuhaus once said: despite the incessant claims otherwise, Benedict’s Regensburg lecture is not chiefly about Islam: it is about the attempt to de-hellenize Christianity and reduce the horizon of reason to positivism.[1]

If Fr. Neuhaus is correct in his assessment, then we must ask ourselves the question: what has Regensburg to do with religion?  In fact, Benedict’s lecture has a lot to do with dialogue between religions as expressed in the concern for the humanum and the principle of humilitas.

The concern for the humanum is expressed throughout the lecture as a concern for the fundamental experiences of the human person: that which is authentically lived in all humanity.  In one of his many writings as Cardinal, Ratzinger writes that “Poverty is the truly divine manifestation of truth: thus it can demand obedience without involving alienation.”[2]  In other words, God’s self revelation is a manifestation of Who He is in the limitedness of His creation.  God is still God despite entering into an encounter with the world.  Ratzinger’s point here, however, is more anthropocentric: man is still man in his encounter with God.  God cannot alienate us from ourselves in His demand for us to follow Him.  Such a principle is manifested throughout the lecture, as highlighted in two instances.  First is his prefatory note about Islam and voluntarism: if God can even enforce the practice of idolatry, how is this affirming of what is truly human?  Secondly, in his analysis of the encounter between Hellenism and biblical faith, stating that the attempted de-Hellenization of Christianity is a project: it is an attempt to remove the rational from the very structures of faith.  In short,faith demands reasonableness and is, in fact, a reasonable mode of encountering reality.  He will, in fact, say that positivism is a reduction of reason.  He argues elsewhere that the ‘axiological structure of faith’ – the acceptance of reality as it is – is part of being human and that we cannot be human without this element of faith.  We must accept axioms in order to function as human beings, making faith a reasonable element of lived human existence. [3]

Positivism’s demand to know merely the observable in order to make valid judgments is in fact an irrational posture.  The issue with Islam is that it throws reason out the window in favour of voluntarism while the issue with rationalism is that it presumes faith to be irrational.  Both positions, Benedict states, are contrary to the core experience of being human.  Positivism and voluntarism, for Benedict, prove to be ahistorical – hence his emphasis on the history of man and the formulation of ideas – and therefore contrary to the core structure of man who is placed in history.

This leads the principle of humilitas.  The common theme of the entire lecture is to re-invigorate the intellectual openness of the University.  This is the reason behind both his experience of universitas at the beginning of the lecture and, at the end of the lecture, to reaffirm the true function of a university as being based in the logos in the broad sense of the term.  In fact, as a sidenote, the address is really about the true form of universitas, and we can take the universitas model as a means for engaging in all sorts of dialogue.  The consistent element of the lecture, however, is the emphasis on humilitas in its biblical sense: to do actions that set one in a proper relation with God or, more generally, with truth.^[4]  In its more general sense, humility is an openness and acceptance of the other who is present to us.  Humilitas, then, is to be expected on both sides of the dialogue.  For Benedict, this means that those who are not Christian – be they Muslim, Jew, atheist, or pagan – must accept Christianity on its own terms as a faith embedded in Hellenistic reason.  Any attempt to impose the other side’s interpretation of Christianity onto Christianity is insufficient for the beginning of a dialogue.  It appears that the process of de-hellenization, then, is a process of removing what is essentially Christian from Christianity.  Christianity practices humilitas with other worldviews (even in a critical manner!), and so ought not other worldviews offer the same consideration to Christianity?

What, then, do these two positions have to do with inter-religious dialogue?  We must first ask the question that Marcelo Pera asks: is dialogue even possible between competing absolute truth claims in monotheistic religions?[5]  Pera thinks it is not,[6] but Ratzinger thinks it is possible if we refocus the terms of what dialogue means.  Dialogue, for Ratzinger, is not an attempt to come to a mutually agreed position.  Rather, dialogue is about accepting the truths that are in accord with our faith from other religions, truths which can even challenge Christianity to rediscover lost elements of truth in its tradition.  Through this discussion, one hopes that truth is reached and thus it is inherently missionary for the Christian.[7]   In these views put forward by Ratzinger, we can see how two principle methods behind the Regensburg Lecture are influential in the practice of inter-religious dialogue.  In regards to the concern for the humanum, we realize that this dialogue must always have the humanum at the center of the discussion: the lived total experience of humanity at its fundamental level in history.  Because of this, constructive criticism can be made towards other religions – and Christianity too! – for not taking the humanum seriously enough.  God, for the Christian, cannot contradict the fundamental reality of humanity.  It is criteria that must be applied to truth, for truth ought not to conflict with what is most basically and fundamentally human.  Humilitas is the extension of the concern for the humanum.  It means allowing each religion and worldview to be itself to the other.  Only when one is truly itself to the other can dialogue truly begin so that we can come to a deeper understanding of each other and the truth, which is at the core of the experience of universitas.  The concern for the humanum and the principle of humilitas, ought to open serious questions and comments between the worldviews.  If there is anything that is proof that these two principles work, it is the response of the thirty-eight and one hundred and thirty-eight Islamic scholars, intellectuals, and clerics who responded to the Pope that Islam’s view of God can be one based in the logos.  This is the true effect of dialogue, but it is only possible when the humanum is placed at the centre and is sought after in humilitas.

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At the risk of sounding trite, I have been there.

I have stood firmly against the idea of a God at all, and I have stood firmly not caring if there was a God.  What possible impact could that have on my life?

I am a convert from the Dark Abyss.

I have walked the secular walk and laughed at the God fearing men and women beneath me whose lives were upheld by the crutch of religion.  I have viewed my own body as a useful tool.  I have had mountains of fun and have wielded my feminine power.    It was a lot of fun. Sort of.

For a while.

What would convict a young woman, the world her oyster to give up the life of freedom and fun?  I’m smart.  Smart enough to know that I wanted my life to have meaning.  Because smart women know there is so much more.

One day it occurred to me that I was worth so much more than this.  I actually remember the moment that everything changed.  I was young, travelling, in a bad marriage and, moments earlier, found out I was pregnant with an unplanned child.

I was euphoric.  Over the moon.  Exalted.  It was my first true experience of a profound joy.

In a bad situation, yes.  I realized that, but I also remembered who I was and how I had been raised.  And it was the first time ever that I considered that there must be a God.  This was too big.  Too big a gift.

This gift of a baby.  An opportunity for redemption.  Sound familiar?  Nobody knows the power of a baby like God does.

I grew up with a father who would have been called sexist.  He’s also the man a hundred women would have married.  Why?  He opens doors, he brings the first pussy willows every spring to my mom.  Never forgets anniversaries and birthdays.  He thanked my mom every night of my childhood for making him dinner. Nothing she ever did, no small menial task, was trivialized. He would have been ashamed to have his wife working.  Not because he didn’t think women had a place in the workforce.  But because he thinks that womanhood, motherhood is so valuable that you wouldn’t entrust in to anyone else.

He asked my mom to marry him and that meant, I love you and my love means that I will care for you and for the fruit of our love, our children.  I will make your life as pleasant for you as I am able, because you have a hard and profoundly important task.  And I should support and uphold and care for such an important vocation. Because it matters.  More than anything.

We are equal.  But not the same.  You are the life giver.

What woman doesn’t want to be upheld like this by a man?  What woman doesn’t want a dragonslayer?

As a young woman, I was honoured.  I saw my mom honoured.  No one had to ever tell me to fight for equality.  Equality did not come to me because I could get grades, pay scale or respect equal to a man’s.  The honour bestowed on me transcended equality.  Why would I settle for equality?

Let me give just one powerful example of how our culture is duped by the message of equality.   Contraception.

You cannot tell me that relinquishing the one profound thing that a woman can do that a man CANNOT do, carry and nurture a human infant, makes women equal to men.

It makes me a slave.  A slave because I am now making myself available to a man, or many men, without responsibility.  I am slave to a pill.  I am slave to the success of that pill.  I make myself lesser to be equal?

Not me.  No way.

Even as a non Christian woman, one using contraception, I thought this isn’t right.  I’m not broken.  My fertility means I’m working.  I’m healthy.  So now I am taking a pill which will take my perfectly healthy reproductive system and render it useless.  And maybe even cause it damage?

You see, we think the pill is going to give us freedom.  Freedom to get the career I want, freedom to earn what a man earns, freedom to choose my sexual partner, freedom of choice.  After choosing that life, I found I was not free.  I was enslaved and unhappy.

I chose again.  True freedom this time.

This is freedom; to marry a man, for life who will care for me and respect me and love me because I have intrinsic value.  This is freedom.  Freedom to educate myself, or choose a career, or work at something because I want to, not because I have something to prove or equality to attain. To love him and share union with him and have babies with him.  And not every worry about another pill, another unhappy chapter in the book of non committal relationships.

I have lived the last twenty years of my life without fear.  Of pregnancy, of contraceptive failure, of being dissatisfied with my life.

Hardship, yes I have experienced that.  What life doesn’t?  But fear enslaves us, hardship does not.

Recently, my Facebook page has been ripe with conversation over the whole issue of the Obama Administration forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients with the new HHS mandate.  It has been an interesting (and, to be frank, tiring) conversation.  Many friends who are not religious have been especially vocal on the discussion.  Some have realized the real issue – religious freedom – while others have totally missed the point, thinking this is all about contraception.

In regards to contraception, a lot of people who I have discussions with promote the idea that Jesus is all about love and peace and so therefore he should be about letting us do thing according to the norms of today.  They are right to an extent: Jesus is about love and peace.  However, the Christian understanding of love and peace are vastly different than what the world thinks.

In regards to peace, the day to day parlance tends to mean “without conflict, comfort, stability”.  For Christians, this is anything but the case.  Peace comes from living a devoted relationship to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Peace comes from embracing the Cross, from living a life of love for God and others.  Peace, then, could be in the midst of conflict and strife: externally, things may be anything but peaceful!  Yet in the heart of the Christian, they have the certitude of faith that Jesus is with them in this moment and that they are following the will of God that they have come to know for themselves through prayer and discernment.

This leads me to what love means for the Christian.  This is perhaps the most misunderstood concept about Jesus and Christianity in the world.  Love, for many today, means nothing more than to accept people’s actions and norms as they are.  In short: be as you are, that’s all that matters.  To an extent, there is a kernel of truth to this: we love people as they are, but it does not mean we are always affirming of their actions.  We love the murderer (to be hyperbolic) but do not approve of his actions!

For Christianity, love is self-sacrificing, objective, and demanding of more.

Self-Sacrificing

This is the core of Christian love.  It is encountered by all when the see Jesus on the Cross.  Love in human flesh is put on the Cross out of love for us.  He goes up there willingly with the desire to embrace all the sin of humanity so that humanity can live their true calling once again.  It is a complete death-to-self-for-the-sake-of-the-other.  It is putting my self to the side for the one whom I love.  It is in this complete death to self for the other that makes me human.  The Second Vatican Council teaches that “man cannot find himself except through a sincere gift of self”.  To give myself is the means to finding myself because, by giving my whole self to an other, I thereby find myself accepted, loved, and affirmed in the one to whom I give my whole self to.  To give consideration to self is contrary to Gospel love.  Selfishness has no place in it.  Every serious Christian knows this and does what they can to root it out of their lives with the help of God’s grace.  This type of love is the basis for the demand of greatness and the objective character of love.

Objective

This aspect of Christian love comes from the great insights of St Ignatius of Loyola and my reading of my favourite theologian: Hans Urs von Balthasar.  Love is objective.  What do we mean by this?  The term objective in Christian parlance means that it is greater than me, it holds a force that transcends me as an individual and calls me to make it personal in my life, to become flesh to it.  Love as objective, then, has a very personal dimension: it is something I make my own and is not me.  For love to be objective in me, I need to embody it completely and put my self to the side completely.  In way, love as objective is another way of speaking about love as self-sacrificing except that I find it gives it a much more personal dimension.  Love is something that calls me to embrace it completely and to live it with a totality of my life because, by doing so, I become the person God calls me to be.  We are only truly happy, truly joyful when we allow God in our lives so completely, so totally,that people see Christ in us and we see Christ in others.  To live the objectivity of love, then, requires complete and totally humility.  Humility is that complete openness to the truth of reality: to let God speak as He is, to let our world “be itself” to us.  Humility is listening with an openness and attentiveness that – frankly – is difficult in a world full of noise.  I have a whole post on humility that I want to write so I think I’m going to leave it there for now.

Demanding of More

For me, this is perhaps one of the more misunderstood elements of Christian love.  As I said above, people are right that we are to love people as they are.  But, since love is objective, it calls us to something more than we are.  It is greater than us because the Person Who embodies it – Jesus Christ – is both perfect man and Son of God.  The love we wish for in our lives, the love we yearn for by being distracted, the love we seek in casual sex, the love we seek in countless relationships with “the love of our life (I’m sure this time!!)”, the love we seek in material wealth, it is all an expression of a deeper desire of our human heart for something more.  It is why we accumulate, it is why we try more things: we are seeking for the one thing that fulfills the call of our hearts.

Our issue, though, is that we seek that one thing in that which does not call us to be more.  One of the most disheartening things I have heard from people in this conversation about contraception is the pessimistic, lethargic, and complete undervaluing of the human person.  People do not expect great things out of themselves or others.  They say they are “realists” because they are in tune with what is normative in our culture.  Is millions of abortions normative?  Is suicide normative?  Is loneliness normative?  Is poverty – both of the heart and financially – normative?  The way a society exists is – if you will – the work of art of a culture.  What is in the soul of our society expresses itself in the ‘art’ of our actions and what is normative.  I do not see a society all that happy.  I see a society that is content, and that scares me.  Jesus said “it is better to be hot or cold” but do not be lukewarm.

The Christian teaching of love demands us to be greater than we are.  What we are now is not who we are called to be.  We are called to be so much more!!!!  We are called to live a life of heroism in the ordinariness of our lives!  Deep down, there is a desire to be unique, special, and loved.  But many of us have found that desire frustrated, trampled on, and destroyed all too many times by those we thought loved us.  This is sad and true.  But it does not justify repressing our desire for that “something more”.

I know from experience.  My life prior to my conversion – and to an extent it will never leave me! – was a life of complete selfishness.  I did what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, and how I wanted to do it.  And I was miserable.  I had no direction in my life.  My heart yearned for more, but regardless of where I went, my heart was never satisfied.  The encounter with Jesus Christ changed my life.  In one night of prayer, I encountered Him Who I had been searching for all along.  I can guarantee it: if there is a life lived for the Love which fulfills all desire – the love that is incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ – then all you search for, all you yearn for, is completed in Him.

I thought I was happy before encountering Him.  Now that I know Him, I realize the misery that was a part of my life.  But we cannot see the darkness of our misery until we see the brilliant light of His Love.

in Christ

-Harrison

I would first like to introduce you to the Society of Canadian Catholic Bloggers.  It is a blog that is attempting to bring all Catholic blogs into a central place from within the Canadian context.  Please check it out .

Through that, you will find a blog by a Jesuit studying for the Canadian province.  I highly recommend it.  You can check it out here.

in Christ

-Harrison

The first is the misrepresentation of my appeal to Pascal.  I appealed to him as a sort of “rebuff” to dilettantism: the idea that “you have to try everything once.”  First, I don’t agree with dilettantism: it has all sorts of internal inconsistencies both logically and ethically.  All I was doing in appealing to Pascal was his idea of “living as if God existed” as important for the dilettante to take seriously if they are going to live by such a standard.  I agree with one friend – to an extent – that Pascal ought not to be used apologetically for the existence of God. I would put forth, however, that Pascal has been grossly misrepresented in his wager as being an argument purely for the assent of the mind.  If one wants a strong critique of that interpretation, read Blondel’s “L’Action”.

In reference to Tom’s comment, I would put forth that really this is a misunderstanding of what I was putting forth.  He is treating the transcendental as part of this world alone still.  I am arguing differently: man’s experience of the transcendent is one aspect, but my argument is that God is not only experienced as transcendent, but that He is, by nature, transcendent to ALL nature.  This is not the nature of the Norse gods or the Flying Spaghetti Monster: their natures are by definition non-transcendent to the natural realm.  By definition the Norse gods etc do not fulfill the demands of the experience of transcendence.  Here is a diagram to emphasize my point:

Tom’s version of reality could be described as this:

________________________

Transcendental Being(s)  \
|                                          \ -> The one reality
\/                                       /
The universe                        /

OR another way:

God->Universe->Human Beings

My claim:

God (Total Transcendence)

_____________________________  > Infinite gulf between God and created realm

{The created realm (including angels, demons, etc. according to a Catholic cosmology).}

In short, for Thor to be Thor, he cannot be equated to the God of Christianity.  By definition the transcendence is of an infinite stature.  It is also, by virtue of the utter transcendence that God can be entirely present to the world He created: because He is completely Other and completely Greater.  He cannot do this if He is equated to the gods of Norse Mythology.  We are talking about two different orders.  The categories used by the former diagram are the god that I don’t believe in either.  But the issue of my article – and this is where I find that it was either ignored or that I, at least, didn’t make myself sufficiently clear – is that the Norse gods cannot be equated to the transcendent mystery of Christian theism.  If an atheist is attempting to debunk the very mystery of the Christian God, they need to start speaking the theistic terms that we are speaking, but they are consistently being ignored.  This is why the discussion is always at a stop: we are speaking of two entirely different realities.  Until the atheist is willing to speak of the realm of completely other, there is no discussion happening.  In short: what I wrote was not a polemic against atheists, but an invitation to dialogue about the reality as it is believed by Christians and other theists.  People like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc. are attacking a straw man: the god that they define is not the God of Christianity (or Israel: Islam, it is a little different).  Until they are willing to accept the Christian claim as it stands for the Christian, then no conversation will actually happen.  I cannot remember where I read it, but I recall Hitchens once saying that the problem of transcendence is the greatest issue for the atheist to reconcile with his position.

This brings me to another comment on the blog found here.  I would first like to say that to an extent, every debate will have an “us vs. them” mentality.  I have one position, another side has another position.  By the fact of the nature of dialogue and debate, polemics are a necessary element.  It is not necessarily to be taken as an all out war, but we must acknowledge that for debate/dialogue to occur, we must necessarily have differing positions.  And again, I do not find the claim that an atheist ought to take a life of theism seriously to be  unrealistic if they are of the opinion that “you need to try something before you decide for or against it.”  If they don’t hold that position about life, then yes, we ought to be going another direction.  It is simply a statement, as I said above, that there is an inconsistency that I find disconcerting.  If you expect something of others, you ought to live it yourself.

This brings me to my final point with regards to this.  I did not write the article as an apologetic against the atheist, nor did I write it as an argument for theism.  I wrote it simply as an appeal to dialogue: an appeal to the clarification of terms which I find so very lacking in the discussion/debate of God’s existence.  I actually do not think that logical argumentation is the absolute way to go for a variety of reasons.  Ultimately, for the Christian, joy and holiness are the ultimate apologetic for the existence of God and the saving power of His Son, Jesus Christ. It is there that Christians should be beginning.  The initial post was simply to be a reflection on what I found lacking in the discussion about God between theists and atheists.  However, I must admit, it has spurred me on to want to write more articles about it as a series.  That way I can have the nuances I need.  I especially desire to speak about this in regards to Pascal’s Wager.  Though it ought not to be, per se, used as an apologetic, I think it is far too often misunderstood in the contemporary discussions.  I think Pascal is offering something far more challenging than what is presented in most intro to Philosophy classes, or most people’s interpretations of it.  So keep your eyes open.

in Christ

-Harrison

I bring this up because I have discovered that this tends to hold true in much of my discourse with atheists.  Reading Karl Rahner for one of my courses – as painful as it was – reinforced in me an idea that has been germinating in my mind for quite some time.  I have come to realize that the god of the atheist is a god I don’t believe in either.  I too want to do everything I can to destroy the idol of that god in the world.  However, unfortunately, the atheist tends to equate that god with the God of the theist or the Christian, and it is in no way the same as the Christian God.

For Christians, God is completely Other.  He is completely transcendent to all creation.  We cannot grasp Him, we cannot put Him into a box, we cannot define Him completely.  For everything we do say positively about Him, we must hold that these words are insignificant in comparison to the reality that is God.  If God is love, He is ever more than our understanding of love, for example.  Yet when you talk to an atheist, they look at ‘god’ as some figure who can be examined, dissected, and parsed.  In short, their ‘god’ is one who is completely comprehensible to the human mind.  And they impose this idol as the god of all theists.  But this is not our God.  God is completely other.

Where is the proof of this?  The most common version is their equation of the Christian God with Thor, Zeus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.  In short: the gods or God: they are all part of our order of things.  They do not see God as completely other.  If God is not completely other, then I don’t believe in Him either.  A great proof of this is found in Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion”.  He says “the problem about a designer is this: who designed the designer”.  What we see in this is a subtle problem: Dawkins is equating the Christian God as simply the first thing in reality.  The whole of the cosmos and God are in the same reality: God is just the greatest thing of our reality.  But that is not the Christian claim.  Dawkins (and most atheists) set up a straw man.  They rightly destroy that idol.  But they have not ridden us of the Christian God because they have never taken Him seriously.

Yet when we look at Scripture, we see a very different understanding of God.  When Moses encounters God in the burning bush he asks Him a name and God refuses to give Moses a name; He simply says “I AM WHO AM”.  God refuses to give a name because to give a name means you can be manipulated.  Job’s search for meaning in his suffering is also a demonstration of God’s complete Otherness: “My ways are not your ways”.  God is infinitely more than anything in the created realm.  God transcends all that is: He is completely, totally, and irrevocably OTHER.  Thus, when people like Dawkins make the claim “who designed the designer”, it is a demonstration that they are unable to grasp the totality of the mystery, transcendence, and otherness of God.

This brings me to a second point on the topic.  We live in a culture which states that you have to try everything in order to make an informed choice.  My first reaction to this is simply “well, do I have to try murder to see if it’s wrong?”.  It is a rather extreme statement to make, but it is hyperbolic in order to demonstrate the absurdity of what Blondel calls “dilenttantism”: the need to try everything because that is what life is all about.  I bring this up because it leads me to the important of Blaise Pascal’s arguments for the existence of God.  Though I don’t have the space to go into detail about what he says, I simply want to emphasize his idea that it is the most reasonable thing to believe in God because it is the statistically best idea to embrace in virtue of his four possibilities.  What we tend to do is think that belief is purely in the mind.  It is an assent, and that is it.  But Pascal means something by belief.  He means that we ought to live as if God exists.

What does this mean?  It means that our life is formed by God: action is what is primary.  If we live as if God exists, then our minds will be formed to embrace the total Otherness of the reality of God.  What does this mean?  It means that it tends to be the case that those who are atheists have never actually given theism a shot because they have never lived according to what that entails.  Some may have been raised in religious households, but I have found that what they have been raised in tends towards superstition.  Some legitimately reject God as He is.  But my question to atheists is “Have you actually lived as if God exists?”  If not, then their statements are futile and what they say is not based on reality as such.  I would be much more willing to listen to an atheist who actually takes reality seriously.  Unfortunately, I have yet to meet one.

in Christ

-Harrison

The first comes from the 2nd antiphon from Evening Prayer in Sunday, Week IV.  It says “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness; they will be satisfied.”  The second came from a website I was reading about Bl Jordan of Saxony, OP and Bl Diana of Andalo, who were spiritual friends in a very intimate way and wrote beautiful letters to each other.  In this site, the author describes a scene between St Thomas Aquinas and his sister.  His sister asks “how does one become a saint.”  St Thomas responded simply: “Desire it.”

How true this is!  Often we allow fear to get in the way of not only what God wants, but what we truly desire!  We often allow fear, which is rather marginal, yet loud, to overtake our spiritual life, and we become handicapped by it.  One of our formators quoted a Sulpician spiritual writer who’s name I am currently forgetting.  Paraphrased, this spiritual writer stated that when we are in prayer, when we are in discernment, we are not to listen to the distress, the anxiety, the confusions (in essence: the noise!).  Rather, our duty as men and women devoted to God is to look for Him in the silence because God is not one to yell and scream at us.  He speaks softly because He has no desire to overcome us by His will, but rather to bring us close to Him in the silence of love.

Sometimes, we allow fears, troubles, difficulties to overcome us in our spiritual lives.  We listen to the noise of our lives instead of being silent to listen to that still, small voice of God.  But to listen to the noise is to, as Msgr Albecete says, have a reduction of our desires.  It is noise because we know it is not what we desire.  But it is so loud sometimes, we allow the noise to overcome us.  We are defeated: we give into things that are not in accord with our desire for holiness.

Yet, God is ever present to us, and lifts us up close to His arms!  The Son of the Father is close to our hearts, indeed, He has opened His side on the Cross for us to enter into His heart, so that we may encounter His love for us.  So when are desires have been reduced, we need only to climb close to His heart, where His love beats passionately for us.  And by being there, by listening to the rhythm of His love, in the silence of that contemplation, our desires are restored, and we are brought, once again, close to Him so as to bring His love to others.  ”Peace!  Be Still” (Mk 4:39)

It is Him Whom we should desire with our whole hearts.  Nothing else should get in its way.  The desire is there: He has given us that desire because we are made for Him.  And, He will give us what we need because if He wants us to be with Him, He knows we can’t do it on our own.  So we must start acting on that desire, we must seek Him in all things.  That is the call of all: desire to be a saint and act on that desire constantly.  God will fulfill it.  He is faithful, we can trust His word on that.  But we must first act on that desire.

So, let us climb into His heart, let us sit at the foot of Divine Love and drink from the Spring of Life.  Let us drink of the Word which flows from the lips of the Father.  Let us hang onto that Word, let us taste fully of the Word so that we too may have our desires fulfilled in Him Who gives Himself to us without ceasing.

in Christ

-Harrison