Yesterday was a moderately productive day. I added almost two pages to my Freshman Essay, but I’ve found that I may need to readjust everything once I’m done. I’m debating about whether I should (1) use first person and (2) incorporate my own experiences in the paper. If the first one goes, the second one must also. I’m going to try to finish a big chunk of it today to show it to a few tutors tomorrow, and they will give me the feedback I need. It’s an exciting process, and this essay will be decent when it’s done. It’s not fabulous, but it’s also not nearly as boring as my last mathematics paper. There’s much leeway with the Freshman Essay, as opposed to the Sophomore Essay, which is about half of the determinant that allows a student to proceed into the last two years at this school.
The freshmen have been reading Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things. He’s fascinating, but also irritating. He’s an Epicurean materialist; he claims everything is made out of indestructible atoms, and there is no spirit (or, more literally, that “mind” and “spirit” are also made out of atoms), and religion is the source of all the worlds evils (I may agree), and he tells me not to worry about life because there’s no afterlife, and all of men’s selfish evils are caused by his fear of death. It’s very godless, pro-hedonist, and spiritually dry stuff. I found myself frustrated in my seminar last Thursday because people were discussing Lucretius’s ideal world—where men live separately eating off the land without need for social interaction and complete submission to their circumstances whether they starve or thrive—as if it was a possible alternative to what we have now. After my tutors and a few students had outlined that world and why it sounded so wonderful, I couldn’t help but jump into the conversation and declared, “But that’s not real.” The question was followed by a pause in the conversation, and then utterly ignored. The rest of the conversation was painful; I actually had the sensation that someone was lying to me as they outlined the world according to Lucretius. You know that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach when your trust for someone begins to fail? Jesse reported a similar feeling in his seminar. My peers and tutors had pulled the wool over their eyes and were trying to convince me that it was a good idea. Not only was there an abandonment of reason (I can handle that), but a very real manifestation of how certain people struggle spiritually. Most of my peers understand that there’s something (the biblical description is “the flesh” or “fallen nature,” but they call it “human nature”) that interferes with love, joy, and peace in human existence, and they want to embrace these philosophies that claim the struggle can be undone with a certain understanding or a particular application of policy. But it’s like convincing a communist that capitalism will solve all his problems. People were buying Lucretius’s deceptions as if they actually could end up beside a river in some idyll eating wild grapes and singing with birds. It’s fascinating to me that there’s something within people that desires Eden again. But I don’t desire Eden, because Eden has perished, and my God has something new and greater for me here and now, and forevermore.
The Lord spoke to me sometime after the seminar about what it is to believe. And the Spirit reminded me of Jesus’s encounters before He was crucified, bringing to my attention a particular verse, which I stumbled upon Saturday morning—
One of the most wonderful examples of this point is one of my peers named Hannah, who had not been a believer in God for years. She came out of the first Lucretius seminar, the one in which Jesse also sat, and told him that it seemed most obvious now, having heard so much “proof” against divinity, that there is indeed a Creator. It wasn’t logic that prompted her to think thus; within there’s something stirring in her that can’t accept the falsehood of those wolves in sheep’s clothing. Neither can I.
The freshmen have been reading Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things. He’s fascinating, but also irritating. He’s an Epicurean materialist; he claims everything is made out of indestructible atoms, and there is no spirit (or, more literally, that “mind” and “spirit” are also made out of atoms), and religion is the source of all the worlds evils (I may agree), and he tells me not to worry about life because there’s no afterlife, and all of men’s selfish evils are caused by his fear of death. It’s very godless, pro-hedonist, and spiritually dry stuff. I found myself frustrated in my seminar last Thursday because people were discussing Lucretius’s ideal world—where men live separately eating off the land without need for social interaction and complete submission to their circumstances whether they starve or thrive—as if it was a possible alternative to what we have now. After my tutors and a few students had outlined that world and why it sounded so wonderful, I couldn’t help but jump into the conversation and declared, “But that’s not real.” The question was followed by a pause in the conversation, and then utterly ignored. The rest of the conversation was painful; I actually had the sensation that someone was lying to me as they outlined the world according to Lucretius. You know that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach when your trust for someone begins to fail? Jesse reported a similar feeling in his seminar. My peers and tutors had pulled the wool over their eyes and were trying to convince me that it was a good idea. Not only was there an abandonment of reason (I can handle that), but a very real manifestation of how certain people struggle spiritually. Most of my peers understand that there’s something (the biblical description is “the flesh” or “fallen nature,” but they call it “human nature”) that interferes with love, joy, and peace in human existence, and they want to embrace these philosophies that claim the struggle can be undone with a certain understanding or a particular application of policy. But it’s like convincing a communist that capitalism will solve all his problems. People were buying Lucretius’s deceptions as if they actually could end up beside a river in some idyll eating wild grapes and singing with birds. It’s fascinating to me that there’s something within people that desires Eden again. But I don’t desire Eden, because Eden has perished, and my God has something new and greater for me here and now, and forevermore.
The Lord spoke to me sometime after the seminar about what it is to believe. And the Spirit reminded me of Jesus’s encounters before He was crucified, bringing to my attention a particular verse, which I stumbled upon Saturday morning—
Go, and tell this people:He spoke of two things. Firstly, that people will never understand what they’re not even ready to hear. If their hearts are not ready, the truth will never be anything more than a vibration of their eardrums. This passage, where Jesus is speaking to some other Jews, illustrates the first point well:
“Keep on listening, but do not perceive;
Keep on looking, but do not understand.
Render the hearts of this people insensitive,
Their ears dull,
And their eyes dim,
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
Hear with their ears,
Understand with their hearts,
And return and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:9-10 NASB)
Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God. (John 8:43-47, emphasis mine)Secondly, that my ministry is not to persuade my fellows that God exists, but instead to be a light among darkness, walking and talking with the authority and power given to me. It’s worth examining Jesus’s reactions to the arguments of the intelligentsia when He was teaching near Jerusalem. If I can persuade a person that God exists, then another can persuade him that He doesn’t. And the argument for theism is a worthless one, in my opinion, because even demons are theists. And deism—that is, the assumption that God can be understood and embraced through reason alone—is rooted in unreasonable presuppositions that make the arguments decay and, invariably, conflict with the nature of God, who reveals himself to people not through logic but through presence! Why does Thomas Aquinas need five proofs that God exists? Shouldn’t one be enough? but that God need not prove Himself to man! I’m a minister of the gospel, not a minister of the textbook proof for divinity. My testimony is of the presence of the Lord, not the persuasive argument of friends, who did try for years but failed to convince me of anything.
One of the most wonderful examples of this point is one of my peers named Hannah, who had not been a believer in God for years. She came out of the first Lucretius seminar, the one in which Jesse also sat, and told him that it seemed most obvious now, having heard so much “proof” against divinity, that there is indeed a Creator. It wasn’t logic that prompted her to think thus; within there’s something stirring in her that can’t accept the falsehood of those wolves in sheep’s clothing. Neither can I.
No comments:
Post a Comment