The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth

When last we spoke in Slanderously Snuffing Smoldering Wicks, we spent some time looking at the temptation to talk behind another’s back. Whereas James said that “the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things,” Jesus got to the root of the matter when He said, “for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” In order for there to be unity within the body of Christ, all members have to put Him—and all that He values—first and glorify Him, the Head of the Body. If all members are working together with the view of putting God and others first, then disagreements will generally be slight, infrequent, and quickly resolved. Yet there will still be many times in which we are painfully aware of our own inadequacies, an awareness in itself commendable, for it is but a simple recognition of truth. However, knowledge (the “stuff” of truth) is itself neither good nor bad: it becomes good or bad depending on the way in which it is (or is not) appropriated. If I bare my soul to a trusted friend, by knowing the secrets I divulge she can more effectively help me. But that trusted friend also has it within her power to take that very same information and shred my reputation to tatters if she is so inclined. So too, an awareness of our own inadequacies is a matter of truth, but it is possible to respond negatively to that recognition: pride, envy, rebellion, anger, contention, and strife but a few of the results.

In like manner, perhaps the biggest reason we take our eyes off Christ is because we lose faith in ourselves. When we feel like we have failed—or when we feel like we are ourselves failures—our focus tends inward on itself. I am reminded of a line in the classic comedy Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare. The heroine of the tale is named Hero and shares the limelight with her saucy cousin Beatrice, both of whom are eligible for marriage. However, there is intrigue in the air and budding romance threatens to go awry—or fail to even leave the ground, as the case may be. We shall not further divulge the details but simply say that it is Hero’s father Leonato who utters our lamentation of interest: “For there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently, / However they have writ the style of gods / And made a push at chance and sufferance.” That is the simple truth: a philosopher may write, as it were, with the very quill of the gods and have abounding knowledge to offer on every lofty subject, but it takes but one little toothache to cause his focus to center on the source of the pain to the exclusion of the world at large.

Just like the philosopher with his elevated prose and insight brought to his knees by a simple toothache, so too do we often focus on our pain to the exclusion of our Lord: it can easily seem more real to us than He. Our pain comes on many fronts, but it is often subtle and emotional, that sense of inadequacy with which we all grapple sneaking up on us unawares, all part of the shattering of the imago Dei. When we start feeling down on ourselves and lose focus, we have a tendency to compare ourselves to others. And when we compare ourselves to others, we have a tendency to get jealous and when we have a tendency to get jealous, we have a tendency to backbite one another. As I write in What my Sins Say to Me: Connected to the Dot Numbered One, “When we feel down on ourselves, we are ripe targets for envy, jealousy, backbiting, and a host of related ills.” Left to comfort ourselves, we soon despair. But the joy of the Lord is our strength and is able to sustain us, though responding with a grateful heart must be cultivated if it is to reach the full bloom of maturity. We cultivate the joy of the Lord by not only being honest with ourselves and God about how we feel, but by choosing to see the beauty in the bittersweet and making it a point to treat others with kindness and respect no matter how we feel. It is usually the case that when we choose to be kind to people and maintain a positive outlook that we soon begin to feel far more positive and joyful. Conversely, if we sit and sulk, we often increase our gloom and spread it to those around us. If we will allow Him, Christ will help reshape us so that we become less self-centered and more other-centered, naturally positioned to receive His abundant joy.

I was reading the fifteenth chapter of Romans this morning and I couldn’t help but think how well it, along with chapter fourteen, forms a natural continuation of our topic carried over from the last issue. We were then concerned mostly with speaking ill of persons behind their backs, but Saint Paul challenges us to a new level of concern and consideration for one another, particularly over the minor differences that often separate the Body:

Do you notice that not only are we to be patient with one another, but we are to seek to build up one another’s spirit? That is where we will find our greatest happiness, for when we build others up, we ourselves are built up; when we tear others down, we ourselves fall. Encouragement and edification is one of the vital roles of the church, for we become easily discouraged and discontented in the hustle and bustle of life. In a strange paradox, when we are feeling down, what we often need to do is help someone else up. This very thing happened to me recently as I was engaged in a conversation with a friend who had a heavy burden bearing on his mind. At times, I think he felt he was imposing on me, and I was quick to reassure him that I was there for him and he was grateful for the empathetic ear. What he could not see at that moment was that I had been feeling so bleak and worthless that to feel like I was an encouragement to anyone was a blessing from above. In effect, we both helped each other up to higher ground, rather than nipping at each other and spreading further misery. And you know, sometimes the greatest gift we can give to others is to gratefully accept their gifts? I once knew a man who received a dinner invitation, but he refused because he didn’t want to impose on the family who invited him, knowing they were not particularly well-to-do. He thought himself charitable and considerate and indeed his words were not in the least impolite, but he did not see what I, a spectator to the event, saw all too clearly: the obvious disappointment that flickered in their eyes though they quickly turned and hid it away. We all need to be needed; sometimes we need to give that gift away to someone else. Maybe Lewis had something like that in mind when he wrote in Mere Christianity, concerning the “new men” and how to recognize them, that “You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you.”

Do you remember in the last issue how we looked at the idea of self-discovery through the mirror of another person’s eyes? We noted that it is “possible for us to look into the mirror of another and see ourselves more clearly, and then, having done so, reflect this self-awareness back out in the form of compassion and empathy the way our Lord did.” We also looked at some of the writing of the contemporary philosopher Arthur Danto in his book Transfiguration of the Commonplace. He writes, in part, that: “I come to know that I am an object simultaneously with coming to know that another is subject: that those eyes are not just pretty bits of color, but are looking at me: I discover I have an outside in a way logically inseparable from my discovery that others have an inside.” Do you know why he chose the words “object” and “subject” and the significance such has on our use of language? Let’s take a quick detour before we come back to spiritual implications.

We’ve already tipped our hand with the use of the terms “subjective” and “objective,” which it shouldn’t be hard to infer have “subject” and “object” respectively as their root words. But why do we use these terms, what do they truly mean, and what are the implications to our discussion today?

Have you ever noticed that when the police arrest someone, it is said that they have “apprehended the subject”? Or that in medical experiments, those involved are called “test subjects”? Or in medieval literature, we often encounter kings who rule over their “subjects.” So then, it seems quite clear that when we speak of “subjects” in this way, we have in mind human beings. But do we often have the idea of human beings in mind when we speak of “objects”? When we speak disdainfully of the effects of pornography, for example, we say that it reduces women to mere “sex objects.” However, there aren’t many other instances in which we use such descriptions. So then, it should become clear that when we speak of human beings as being “objects,” we are calling attention to a certain kind of response to those persons, whereas when we use the word “subjects,” we are referring to the persons themselves without qualification. In other words, when we speak of “objects” we generally don’t have persons in mind at all; when we speak of “subjects” we do. Let’s put these ideas together.

An object—let’s say a pile of “dog doo”—has certain properties to it that can be measured. For example, we could say of our disdainful pile that it had a certain density and mass. In order to have mass, nothing else in the universe would have to exist. But in order to be “stinky”—a negative value judgment—there have to be people (or other sentient beings) with noses to smell. In a universe in which no beings had noses (or equivalent sense organs), our pile of dog doo could only be said to have the potential property of stinkiness such that if there were beings who had noses to smell, it would (presumably) smell stinky. But whether another thing in the world exists or not, the pile is still going to have an appreciable mass and density—or so goes the rationale of the Enlightenment philosophers. (We are, of course, leaving out considerations of gravitational force to illustrate our point.)

So then, those properties which are found in the object are said to be “objective,” for they originate in the object itself. These are Locke’s “primary qualities,” which include “solidarity, extensions, shape, motion, and rest.” By rate of contrast, properties which require a subject to perceive them are said to be “subjective,” because they do not originate solely in the object itself, but are only fully made manifest in the end perception of the subject. These correspond to Locke’s “secondary qualities,” which include “color, sound, taste, smell, and texture.” The senses are still involved in empirical study, of course (we are human beings after all—how else are we interfaced with the world if not through bodies that input raw sensory data via sensory perception?), but the assumption is that those things which are empirical are objective (and therefore universal) and do not involve subjective (and therefore particular to the subject) value statements such as “stinky, beautiful, delicious, etc.” Because our contemporary culture prizes this kind of approach to the world, knowledge is thought to be superior if it can be demonstrated objectively, whereas something that can only be perceived subjectively is often considered of lesser importance, at least in many instances. When it comes to self-awareness however, both aspects are undoubtedly important, which prompts Danto to write: “I come to know that I am an object simultaneously with coming to know that another is subject: that those eyes are not just pretty bits of color, but are looking at me.”

The same could be said of the spiritual life. Certainly there needs to be a solid, objective reality upon which to anchor our faith. The complaint with certain forms of mysticism and existentialism is that any assurance of an objective reality beyond is questionable or perhaps even unknowable; they may provide a pleasurable experience, but one is sometimes left with the feeling that one has been engaging in a form of “spiritual masturbation” as opposed to true spiritual intimacy. I am reminded of an illustration R.C. Sproul gave which he in turn lifted from James Kennedy. Kennedy called a man to the podium and asked him to consider a chair that was situated slightly off to the side. He asked the man if he believed the chair could support his weight. Looking the chair over, the man replied that it appeared to be structurally sound and therefore he had no reason to doubt it would support his weight. Dr. Kennedy asked him if he trusted his judgment enough to sit in the chair, to which the man replied that he did. Kennedy then asked the man whether or not the chair was currently supporting his weight, to which the man grew indignant. “Of course not,” he said. “Why?” asked Dr. Kennedy. “Because I’m not sitting in it!” exploded the man.

The lesson is clear. For the man’s faith in the chair to be complete, he must be actively seated on its surface. He may believe all day long that the chair will support his weight, but until he actually seats himself upon it, his faith has never departed the intellectual realm. We cannot lean too far over one way or the other if we wish to stay grounded in reality. The subjective response is essential. But so too is the objective reality to which it corresponds. Isn’t it believed to be grounds to institutionalize persons who claim to be seeing things that no one else sees or hearing things that no else hears? Now it could well be argued and perhaps be quite true that they are actually seeing and hearing things that are really real—and it is further certain that these things are real on some level. But the question we are framing is whether they are real anywhere else beyond the realm of the subject: do they have any objective basis to them? If no objective basis can be discovered, society generally thinks it permissible to intervene and appropriate some kind of treatment up to and including institutionalization.

We should hasten to add here, for those who might wish to be contentious, that we are not rigidly assigning first and secondary properties to our talk of objective reality. In other words, for our purposes, we are not as interested in how we parse the particulars as we are in the simple realization that if we are to place our trust in something, it must be objective: it must really exist apart from ourselves. To accept this concept, we do not have to specify empirical observation. If there existed a pile of dog doo and no one knew of its existence, it would still continue to exist objectively regardless. Thus our examination of that ridiculous question: “If a tree were to fall in the forest with no one to hear it would it make a sound?” The answer depends on how we define the word “sound”: by sound, do we mean the perception of certain vibrations (frequencies) or the vibrations themselves? Once we answer that question, we are no longer left with a dilemma, an obvious answer emerging: “no” if we are referring to perception, because perception necessitates a perceiver and we have stipulated in our question that no such subject is present, “yes” if we mean vibrations, because such will exist without a subject to perceive as sensory data.

It may prove very important that we have made this distinction concerning objective reality, because it would appear that God is not readily open to empirical observation, the usual means of determining objective truth. The rash young skeptic thinks he has dismissed the matter entirely when he asks, “Have you ever seen God? Have you ever heard God? No? Then your God does not exist!” But Jesus wasn’t bothered by a similar (though much more honest) question concerning a “second birth.” In the third chapter of John, he tells Nicodemus: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:6–7). Jesus then says, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). What Jesus is suggesting, then, is a type of knowing not yet understood (or at least articulated) by most secular philosophers. And if we stop and ponder for a moment about the subject and the object—which is more complex? Which examines which? Certainly the “subject as object” is by far more complex than the mere “object as object.” The ability to form subjective responses implies a complexity far more vast than that of inanimate objects. And if we find these subjective things to be objectively true, why would it not be possible to find layers of reality far richer and more complex than the simple dualism of subjective and objective will allow? The key which unlocks the door to these higher levels of reality is often seen as being subjective (in the negative sense), for it can not be demonstrated empirically. There is a common bias that thinks of empiricism as the greatest good; here we should see it as mere empiricism. We are concerned with the realm of the spirit, not of the flesh. “So what is the key to this deeper level of reality, if not empiricism?” you ask. And the answer can only be, “Faith.”

For years and years I was in a quandary concerning my own belief. I desperately desired to find a God—to find the one and only true God—who was objectively real, but I knew that to unlock the door of any religious system took faith, and only with unlocked door could one step over the threshold and see if the inner chamber really contained truth or no. But I believed myself lacking in the initial faith, for I intuitively realized that faith has to be real in order to have any substantive power. One simply does not believe in what he does not believe nor can he do so and maintain any degree of intellectual integrity. And to try to conjure faith forth of thin air would get me nowhere, for it would then be a false faith. Faith is simply a key, but faith in faith never redeemed any man. Only when faith connects to a reality beyond can it hope to have any redemptive value to it. Yet without faith at all, no one can know this deeper reality. I was maddened by this paradox, endlessly beating my head against the walls of my prison in desperation. But there exists within the door a chink, and that chink is the possibility of something beyond. That possibility of something beyond, I now see, is the tiny mustard seed of faith. If I did not believe at all, I would not have been battering my head against the wall: one does not seek what he does not believe—in any form or fashion—exists. If you say to me that I would follow God if only I had proof, I will say to you that the only proof you will be offered will be the result of your faith. And if you tell me—as I once did myself—that you have no faith, I will ask you why it is that you are looking for what you do not believe exists. Because if you are looking at all, you think it at least possible that there exists something beyond, and such a stance requires a tiny glimmer of faith. And if you think it possible, then think it possible to take another step of faith, and, no matter how stupid you feel, ask God to increase your faith if He be real. Ask Him, if He be real, to reveal Himself. You know that in order for your faith to have any solidity, it must be objectively true and not merely a faith in an empty faith. Yet you also know that the method you must employ to unlock this deeper level of reality is not that of empiricism but rather that of faith: that is the key to knowing this kind of reality. You must exercise what faith and trust you do have if you ever wish to delve deeper.

The problem with empiricism is not that it is misguided but that it is limited; we may very well learn much about the material aspects of the universe through its employ. But do you remember our reference to Danto? We said that when it comes to self-awareness, both the subjective and objective aspects are necessary: “I come to know that I am an object simultaneously with coming to know that another is subject: that those eyes are not just pretty bits of color, but are looking at me.” Now if in order to have full self-discovery we must necessarily step outside a purely empirical framework and include subjective elements, how much more so would this be true if we are in search of the Living God? We shall not go into an examination of why God necessarily has to be a personal God: we have already done so in Schaeffer’s Thought Provocation: A Pagan Dialog. What we will say is that being a Personality and not a mere force or an object, the way in which we relate to God is far less that of science and far more that of love. People do not tend to marry spouses because they have done an empirical study of their objective features (though shapely curves do tend to tempt the male mind—even here, we could argue that the desirability of curves is itself subjective); people marry spouses because they love them. In the same way, Christianity is not a matter of an intellectual assent that God exists; Christianity is a relationship. I can believe Susie exists all day long; in fact, I can even empirically demonstrate that she does. But what good does it do me if I never move past this point? How do I get to know her? By empirical study? Or by dropping the empirical pretexts and engaging in subjective correspondence? She and I are both human, after all, not merely objects.

I recently penned the following thoughts to a friend who has expressed interest in mysticism:

You see, we can learn from empiricism just as we can learn from mysticism: both have their place. But these things are merely tools to help us gain a deeper understanding of reality, and, just as we don’t use a wrench to grate potatoes or shred cheese with a can opener, so too does each tool have its proper place and should not be exalted to the exclusion of all other tools. What we really are after is not the individual tools in the kit but the reality they can help us uncover. How joyous the day that we discover that the reality we seek not only has a face and a name but knows ours as well. We are not looking for an object after all, but rather a subject. His name, of course, is Jesus.

“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

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