.:| The Mr. Renaissance Bi-weekly Newsletter |:. archives | discuss | subscribe | print page
January 26, 2005
Hello everyone,
Since last we spoke in Going the Road Alone? The Church Universal, I would like to report that I am one hundred percent better in every way and that roses spring up beside me and bloom everywhere I walk. Unfortunately, that has not been the case, though I think that there are many things that are gradually looking up, not the least of which is my perspective. Put simply, for the moment at least I am getting better at this idea of trust and surrender; it can be very difficult to offer up the anxiety about the things over which one has no control. In any case, my health seems to be holding, though the results were very inconclusive, and, as much as I am trusting that God is healing me, I still have intermittent pain. Essentially, though there were several areas of the tests that came back positive—slightly elevated cholesterol, lipase, and enzymes in the liver—all others including the ultrasound were negative (hence no apparent gallstones). To follow-up, the doctor wanted to have an ERCP performed, but I declined due to financial considerations. Concerning a portion of the latter, the status of my scholarships is still unknown; when I called the financial aid office this Monday, my records indicated that I was only enrolled for nine credit hours. While that is incorrect—I am currently enrolled for twelve credit hours—six of those are applied toward my graduate work, which might still interfere with my scholarships. One would think if only undergraduate hours qualified to renew my scholarships, I would be listed as taking only six credit hours, rather than nine, but one reason this might not be the case is that three of those credit hours were “bumped up” to a graduate level course from the undergraduate catalog. (Complicated!) In any case, depending on whether these scholarships are renewable, I will either owe well over a thousand dollars or only twenty-seven. But there is another matter that has been taking precedence in my thoughts as of late and it is the final prayer request I voiced in the preceding issue: the future of my education. You may recall my thoughts in When Words Rear Up and Roar in Your Face from June 30, 2004:
In keeping with this theme of honesty, my uncertainty as of late has also spread to thoughts of my education and my future. Do I stay in the institution in which I am currently enrolled, or do I try to find a school with higher accreditation? Do I continue to pursue my current major in literature as I work toward my Master’s degree, or should I switch to philosophy or theology? And while teaching is unquestionably my aspiration—I would have no patience with any age level other than college—what subject should I teach? If I stay here, the choice will be made for me, as English majors of all types are assigned 101 and 102 level Composition, teaching freshman how to write more effectively. Recognizing this factor, I began to think more carefully about college and my major. I always wanted to major in psychology. How then did I end up majoring in literature? Before I answer that question, let me state the reasons why I have concluded I am to continue to major in the subject after all and why, of all the many disciplines available to the Christian professor teaching in the secular university, it is, for me at least, the best possible one.
As is alluded to here, psychology was my first academic interest and the reason I started attending school in the first place. But that very first semester, I encountered the subject that had given birth to psychology—indeed, birthed virtually all of the sciences and the humanities as well—and that subject was none other than philosophy. I was recently deleting off a number of old e-mail correspondences discovered stashed away in one of the many directories on my computer and was amused to read that my very first semester, philosophy and I had already begun the initial overtures of a blushing courtship. The professor pulled me aside near the end of the semester and asked me if I was considering a degree in philosophy. I told him that I was interested in psychology, but thanked him, to which he replied that he was sorry to hear because he thought I had a natural aptitude for philosophy. Much to my surprise, I settled on a major in English literature, though I kept philosophy close to my heart as my minor, remembering those demure blushes and how they set fire to my veins. Numerous literature courses began piling one on top of another and I reveled in the discovery of so many worlds from so many periods of history—and with such eloquence! But it seemed as time went on, somehow I did not enjoy my classes as much. Maybe it was because they were becoming much more theoretical over things I considered uninteresting or mere trivialities: I do not really know.
Southwest Missouri State University has a very small philosophy department and there is not a huge interest in the discipline here, perhaps because philosophy is not exactly a light subject nor does it ensure that one will become independently wealthy after all the intellectual blood and sweat has been extracted. In fact, it is widely known that if one becomes a philosopher, one will probably never be wealthy, except perhaps for the crème de la crème, or at least that tiny percentage of thinkers who are perceived as such. But perhaps it is somewhat of a misnomer to say “if one becomes a philosopher,” for while undoubtedly education plays a vital role, one almost needs to have a bent in that general direction if one is to be happy with such a lot in life. Whatever we are to make of this dime store philosophizing about philosophers, suffice it to say that with a small philosophy department and a relatively small interest reflected in the student population, not many classes are going to be offered past the compulsory 101 intro-level prerequisites for one’s general education requirements. If it is true that there is not much interest in philosophy beyond what is required, then it is probably also true that of those handful of upper level courses that are available, they will mainly be offered during the day so that the philosophy professors can go do whatever it is that philosophy professors do at night (and we have all heard the stories). And if that is true (as we reason together like born philosophers), it is probably also true that those students who are working during the day will not have many—if any—options for night courses. So, since that has been true of my life until this past year, I knocked out my major rather quickly, as there are many evening courses offered in the English department—rare would be the university that did not have a reasonably large department of English. But each year, I kept putting off my minor, not because I was not interested, but because I was trying to keep my job as long as I could and that meant there were no philosophy courses available to me. I was terminated from my job sooner than I expected—I was hoping to hang on to it for just a little while longer—but it did free me up to focus on my philosophy studies. Last semester, in addition to anxiety-infested French 201, I had four philosophy courses, and despite the rude shock of initiation, I felt like I had come home. The people around me all seemed to have a very similar kink in their brains and we understood each other somehow: it is hard to explain, but I will say that while many of my female classmates looked about the same as any of the others on campus, the strange kinks in their brains made them immeasurably more attractive to me. What is more, I never graced the doors of the English department offices and yet I have been seated in the office of each of my philosophy professors at least once and often many more times than that.
However, as we reviewed from When Words Rear Up and Roar in Your Face, my plans still held for pursuing my Master’s degree in English literature. Yet even in the paragraph we sampled, there is reticence to be detected; I can see that I was already feeling compromised. Granted, ambivalence is to my world as common as breathing, but I think on some level I realized that it was more a marriage of convenience than a true love affair. Be those early signposts what they may, at the beginning of this semester, I stopped by the office of Dr. Hoogestraat, the graduate program director for whom I feel a great deal of respect, particularly after three semesters of English literature under her watchful tutelage. As she was explaining the steps I needed to take to apply for my graduate assistantship (GA) to pursue my schooling, she strongly alluded to the idea that I could be doing much better for myself elsewhere, though she was nonetheless courteous and helpful. She explained to me the fierce competition of literature professors and told me that I might have a unique marketing niche: my strong Christian faith. She said that few were the students who would not only feel comfortable in a Christian university but would truly belong there as well. Her message was apparent: you are a man of integrity and my conscience is clear in making such a suggestion: one that I could not suggest to just anyone. Beyond the confirmation of my faith, our conversation revealed two things to me: first, that my heart was no longer into literature as the path toward my academic career and second, that with my GPA, I could (and perhaps should) be applying for a more prestigious university. So let us rearrange the pieces once more: SMSU has no graduate program in philosophy and that is where my greatest interest lies; secondly, I have demonstrated the aptitude to move up in the world of higher education. Put those facts together, and I wondered what I was doing even thinking about staying on here; I realized I was only playing at college and that if I continued on my current track, I would be defying the deepest desires of my heart. On my walk back from the college, I prayed about the matter and realized that generally, the deepest desires of our hearts correspond to God’s will for our lives: He is ultimately the One who has instilled them there.
So then, love was calling me away from the easy path and on toward the higher road of the vast unknown; I was compelled to go, for to stay was to be untrue to myself. How then did I respond? I went home to my cluttered bachelor’s pad and fell apart, sick with anxiety. The prospect of such a major change of plans was not empowering, but rather hopelessly overwhelming. Where should I apply? What was I to expect? What about finding housing? Where was the money to come from? Completely numb, I threw myself across the bed and shut the world out with a few precious hours of troubled sleep.
Leaving behind this distressful scene for what it is, let us fast forward to this past Thursday. A bit more settled than where last we’ve left off, I went to Bible study and was expressing my concerns about relocating to a school with higher accreditation and a graduate program in philosophy. I told them that I had my eye on Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a possible choice and we spoke some about the differences in social custom from those in the northern United States versus those in the South and West. (As a rule, those in the North do tend to be more reserved and less outwardly expressive; there is also the less credible stereotype that posits greater depth to northern relationships once established.) The evening helped clear my thoughts and I went home feeling a sense of peace. Sitting down at my computer, I was still thinking about schools when I suddenly voiced a very simple prayer to God, “But where?” Immediately, “The University of Arizona” popped in my mind. That particular university was not in my thoughts at all; in fact, I did not even know if they had a graduate program in philosophy. So, I hopped online and within seconds saw that they did indeed have a Ph.D. program in philosophy. Returning to the Philosophical Gourmet—a sort of de facto for philosophy hopefuls—I saw that disappointingly the University of Arizona was not listed in the top twenty-five research universities. I also knew that it is often a good idea to ask the Lord for further confirmation, because receiving answers in this way is not always known to be reliable. The next day, I expressed my thoughts to a friend:
I was surprised to have the University of Arizona cross my mind, as it had not been in my thoughts. Conversely, Ann Arbor, which ranks in the top five research institutes in the U.S., has never seemed to meet with the green light that my desire to study philosophy has or the recognition that I will need to relocate. When I looked at the list of the top twenty-five schools and a few unrated ones found at Philosophical Gourmet, the University of Arizona was not even listed. My first thought was one of dismay, but then I realized that if God truly wants me to go to the University of Arizona—a school that I did not choose on my own—then that is where I want to go. It is not often that God seems to speak so clearly into my world and even now I have asked Him for further confirmation, which I believe He will give me if He has such a definite plan in mind. The implicit question for me was: “Do you trust me enough that if I send you to a school that does not appear to have a large name and reputation that you will go there anyway?” And my answer met with almost no hesitation: “Yes, Lord. If it is really you leading me to go to this school, then I will gladly go where you send me.” The thought—I will not say it was from God—even occurred to me that I might very well meet my future wife there. The other thought—which I would say was almost entirely my own—is what I read on the page that ranked the research institutions, noting that they were ranked according to their overall status and not necessarily in relationship to the quality of their philosophy department. It might be that the University of Arizona has one of the best philosophy departments in the nation even though they are not as highly ranked otherwise. But for me, the bottom line remains: “If it truly is God directing me to go to the University of Arizona, I would be an utter fool to listen to anyone else’s opinions. If it is not, that is perhaps another story. To this end, I have directed my prayer.”
Of course, it is entirely premature to note whether God is truly calling me to the University of Arizona, much less whether I will meet a companion there. But one speculation, at least, turned out to be true: the University of Arizona is ranked 16th in the nation for their philosophy program, beating out both Yale and Duke as well as the University of Chicago, a school that attracted my interest when I was considering a degree in English literature. That is not nearly as good as Ann Arbor at 4th, but again, if the University of Arizona is where God would have me go, that is where I will go and do it gladly.
Yesterday, on my way to my American folklore class, I bumped into Dr. Knight, one of my philosophy professors from last semester. I was fifteen minutes late for class, but he was very helpful in answering my many questions, the first of which was about a letter of recommendation and an appointment to speak with him further. He forewarned me that almost all Ph.D. programs require submissions well in advance and that I would probably miss the deadline if I hoped to get into the program for this upcoming fall semester. He was correct: the deadline is February 1st and my GRE is not scheduled until February 8th. (It is further my understanding that it typically takes about a month for these test results to be processed and mailed.) He asked me how important getting in for the fall was to me, to which I told him with utter sincerity that while it was important, if it came down to pursing my Ph.D. halfway versus doing it right, I would much rather take my time and do it right. He commended my choice of going straight into a Ph.D. program, noting that if one wished to pursue a Master’s in between, one would almost certainly have to take time out toward his Master’s thesis, which needlessly slows the doctorate process. Later this week, I will talk with him further, but he not only told me that he believed I had the potential but that he has “been known to make a call to the coordinator of graduate studies.” A pupil generally knows which professors to seek out first, and I knew that Dr. Knight would be my primary candidate. Before all is said and done, I hope to seek out all of my philosophy professors and I am certain that they will unanimously provide me glowing reviews because the simple fact of the matter is I am very good at philosophy and I enjoy it immensely. Such a student is going to stand out as a shining example to an often beleaguered professor. As Dr. Knight wrote on one of my tests: “100%. Your paper is a welcome relief to my tired eyes” or as Dr. Martire wrote on my final essay: “This is work nicely done both in general strategy and in particular development. Indeed, such traits have marked your work throughout the semester—it has been nicely disciplined and philosophically fair-minded and balanced.” These comments—or an utter lack of them with either an A or 100 in their place—were the norm in my philosophy studies.
As truly proud of these reflections as I am, I cannot say that I like the thought of sitting out until spring of 2006, but it occurred to me that maybe it would give me a chance to find employment, catch up on my debts, and hopefully assemble a few savings for my upcoming transition. Of course, it is also possible that God will miraculously pull some strings and I will be able to get in by the fall: I will simply have to wait and see what happens. Sitting and waiting is not easy for me, but if I have learned anything from all that has been going on my life as of late, it is to develop more trust in my Heavenly Father. You may recall that in the last issue we spoke of two types of doubt: in the first instance we question our relationship to Christianity, in the second, Christianity is itself questioned. It really does not matter which form of doubt is keeping us in bondage, for both effectively question the all-sufficiency of Christ. But even if we are not suffering from besetting doubt, when life begins to feel like it is careening dangerously out of control, our first instinct is generally to try to grasp desperately for control. Ever seen a man who cannot swim begin to panic in the water? Often he will thrash around so wildly that he ends up slipping below the surface whereas if he would just surrender to the water, it would buoy him to safety. In a similar way, it is possible to (often unconsciously) try to use God as the means to effect our desired end. When things get tough, our prayers frequently become panicked and we begin using God as one more tool to try to micromanage our lives, praying for very specific results that we think will remedy our ills. But He asks us to surrender our lives to Him completely and allow Him to lead as He see fit.
Perhaps this is the reason why twelve-step programs are arranged as they are. The first three steps are these: (1) We admit that we are powerless over (the specific issue in question) and that our lives have become unmanageable, (2) we have come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, and (3) we have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him. Of course, many Christians have an issue with the clause “as we understand Him,” but it is illuminating at least to the degree that we have to be willing to approach God as we currently understand Him before we can ever hope to understand Him as He actually is. In other words, probably none of us understand God as He actually is, but we have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is of necessity at whatever current level of understanding we possess. But the beauty of it is that when we reach out to God from where we are at, we will find Him there, for God, you see, is everywhere. What is more, in order to reach this point of surrender, most of us must experience quite a jarring jolt before we will reach the level of desperation in which we realize that our lives are hopelessly out of control and have become unmanageable. But it is as a friend shared with me recently, citing George MacDonald in The Miracles of Our Lord: “It is well for the weak that their faith should fail them, for it may at the moment be resting its wings upon the twig of some brittle fancy, instead of on a branch of the tree of life.”
The simple fact is, at best we have only a very limited control over the things that happen to us in life. And if we try to take control of that over which we have no control, like the drowning man we are merely expending vast amounts of energy that serve to overwhelm rather than empower us. But as MacDonald posits, beauty can be found in these trials, for the very same Christ that turned water into wine transforms weakness into strength; when we are weak, we are strong—or rather He is strong, for it is then that we realize the true source of our dependence. When we realize that we have no control over the events in our lives anyway, there can be a real comfort in surrendering our lives to Christ to live in as He pleases. Yet for as long as we suffer from the prideful illusion that we have control, we will resent the thought of all such surrender. It is as Bob George writes in the simple but often poignant Classic Christianity:
In order to understand the things God wants to teach us regarding His grace, we must have a humble, teachable attitude, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Just as the same sun that melts wax hardens clay, the same message of God’s grace that softens the heart of the humble hardens the proud. The proud cannot receive grace because the proud will not receive grace. The offer of grace is offensive to the proud heart. That is why the uneducated but humble person will receive far more genuine and intimate knowledge of God Himself than a highly educated but arrogant theologian. (39)
It is the utter simplicity of living by faith and not by sight that often causes us to stumble. When we first come to Christ, we come perhaps for a mixture of reasons, but ultimately we come placing our faith in Him. And concerning faith: do we place our faith in one for whom we hold no trust? Or is trust a very vital ingredient in faith? Could we not say that faith and trust are virtually synonymous with one another? If then, we were to rearrange this idea for clarity, we could say that we walk by trust and not by sight. But what would it mean to walk by sight? Wouldn’t that be something like Peter when our Lord called him out of the boat to walk on the stormy waves? As long as he trusted his Lord, he was walking by faith, placing his trust in his Master. But the moment he became distracted by the ominous waves, he began to rely on sight. You see, this business of walking by faith and not by sight is more a matter of where we place our trust: is our trust centered in the faith that our Lord is all-sufficient and living within us or is our trust based on what our immediate and ever-shifting circumstances would seem to dictate? This then, is how we are to live our lives every day: just as we received Christ into our hearts as an act of faith, so too are we to continue on in that same faith. The immediate circumstances may overwhelm us and threaten to buffet us to our fateful deaths in the deep, but if we walk by faith, nothing—not even death itself—can ever harm us. If we expand the idea of walking by faith outward we can see what some of the implications might include. Paul Tillich offers some interesting insight in his book The New Being:
There is no condition for forgiveness [else it would not be forgiveness]. But forgiveness could not come to us if we were not asking for it and receiving it. Forgiveness is an answer, the divine answer, to the question implied in our existence. An answer is an answer only for him who has asked, who is aware of the question. This awareness cannot be fabricated. It may be in a hidden place in our souls, covered by many strata of righteousness. It may reach our consciousness in certain moments. Or, day by day, it may fill our conscious life as well as its unconscious depths and drive us to the question to which forgiveness is the answer. (To Whom Much is Forgiven)
We come to ask the right questions by approaching God with whatever limited understanding we currently have, and, by often imperceptible gradations, grow in all grace and truth, quickened by the Holy Spirit of God. God is a gracious God and I am reminded of something that Sadhu Sunder Singh once said:
Sometimes people ask me this question: “If God does not wish us to ask for material things, but for Himself, the Giver of all good, why does the Bible never say: ‘Do not pray for this or that, pray simply for the Holy Spirit?’ Why has this never been clearly expressed?” I reply, “Because He knew that people would never begin to pray if they could not ask for earthly things like riches and health and honours; He says to Himself: ‘If they ask for such things, the desire for something better will awaken in them, and finally they will only care about the higher things.’” (Parables and Insights—Sundar Singh)
Personally, I do not think it is so much a case that God does not wish us to ask for material things as it is that He wishes us to see things in their proper perspective. God wants us to share our lives with Him—all the individual details, all the cares and concerns. As 1 Peter 5:7 reads: “Cast all your anxiety on him because He cares for you.” But while we do so, He wants us to seek Him for His own company, recognizing that He is the Source and that material things are simply material things. A likely passage I believe the Sadhu has in mind is found in Matthew 6:24–34:
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
But do you see the total change in attitude here? The issue is not one of what to ask for or what not to ask for, the issue is one of trust. Put God first and He is all-sufficient to meet every other need. Further, He is patient with us and therefore we can learn to be patient with ourselves; there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Condemnation never comes from God but rather comes from a combination of our own faulty understanding and sinfulness as well as the accuser of the brethren. No, Jesus is the friend that sticketh closer than a brother. In fact, Bob George has something further to say to us, taking the idea in 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”) and contrasting it with 1 Corinthians 13, the classic “love chapter.” Highlighting verses four through eight, in place of “love is” he inserts “God is” to stunning effect:
God is always patient with you. God is always kind to you. God does not envy. He does not boast, He is not proud. God is not rude to you, He is not self-seeking, He is never easily angered with you. God keeps no record of your wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects you, always hopes the best for you, always perseveres with you. God’s love for you never fails. (Classic Christianity 159)
On the next page, he goes on to write something else I find quite compelling: “Whether we realize it or not, we will treat other people with the same measure of love, acceptance, and forgiveness that we (rightly or wrongly) think we are receiving from God. We will never love one another with a higher degree of love than we think we are receiving from God” (160—italics in original). To my mind, that certainly explains a lot not only about my perception of other believers, but my own interactions with others as well. In fact, Paul Tillich has quite a lot to say about the matter in The New Being:
As long as we feel rejected by Him, we cannot love God. He appears to us as an oppressive power, as He who gives laws according to His pleasure, who judges according to His commandments, who condemns according to His wrath. But if we have received and accepted the message that He is reconciled, everything changes. Like a fiery stream, His healing power enters into us; we can affirm Him and with Him our own being and the others from whom we were estranged, and life as a whole. . . .
. . . And there is much hostility towards life in all of us, even in those who have completely surrendered to life. Our hostility towards life is manifested in cynicism and disgust, in bitterness and continuous accusations against life. We feel rejected by life, not so much because of its objective darkness and threats and horrors, but because of our estrangement from its power and meaning. He who is reunited with God, the creative Ground of life, the power of life in everything that lives, is reunited with life. He feels accepted by it and he can love it. He understands that the greater love is, the greater the estrangement which is conquered by it. . . .
There is a section of life which is nearer to us than any other and often the most estranged from us: other human beings. We all know about the regions of the human soul in which things look quite different from the way they look on its benevolent surface. In these regions we can find hidden hostilities against those with whom we are in love. We can find envy and torturing doubt about whether we are really accepted by them. And this hostility and anxiety about being rejected by those who are nearest to us can hide itself under the various forms of love: friendship, sensual love, conjugal and family love. But if we have experienced ultimate acceptance this anxiety is conquered, though not removed. We can love without being sure of the answering love of the other one. For we know that he himself is longing for our acceptance as we are longing for his, and that in the light of ultimate acceptance we are united. (To Whom Much is Forgiven)
So then, we have no idea what the future may hold, but we, along with the Apostle Paul, can say: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Granted, it often takes us the long way around to get here, but there is real beauty in the valley; all things do work out together for the good of them that love the Lord:
16. Standing upon the mountain steepHow low the valley seems!And yet, because it lies so deep,It gathers all the streams.Archive note: See also the discussion forum thread regarding this newsletter.17. The valley-spirit cannot fallBecause it lies so low;And yet it is the base of all,And to it all things flow. (The Tao Teh Ching of Lao Tsze, translated poetically by Charles A. Mackintosh)
Let us never turn our back upon the One from Whom—and back again to Whom—all things flow. He is the Lord of the valley and the mountaintop too.
God bless,
Eric
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Table of Contents | Home | About | Newsletter | Forum | Misc. | Contact | Search | Links | Random Page
.:| get up to date: newsletter :. 1&1 .: discussion forum: participate |:.