Below I will be posting an article/journal entry copied from a good friend mine's blog. Jacob Zachary is a talented writer, poet, lyricist, musician, thinker and beard-grower. I hope you all enjoy this article as much as I did. The article made me laugh and cry, made me daydream and evaluate. It deals with the need to recapture aesthetics in the modern church while also recognizing the need to recapture the intellectual side of Christianity. Sadly most churches have neither of these. Read more from Jacob at his blog http://myholycrap.blogspot.com/ and listen to his music at http://web.mac.com/jacob_zachary/Site/____H_O_M_E.html
Here's the article:
THE SOUL IN THE SEED IN THE SOIL
1. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - 1 Cor. 13:11
2. "At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." – Matt. 18:3
There were at least three lessons that I would take away with me in my memory of grammar school. I learned lessons one and two on my very first day. It should be worth noting that when I was born, I was immediately attached to my mother's hip, and that I’m the proudest mamma's boy you should ever wish to meet. Needless to say, that first day of grammar school was heartbreaking for both of us. I remember screeching like a bird being nudged out of the nest before his first flight when I left her precious arms. The initial five feet or so is a hard plummet, but by the end of the day I was flying high and ecstatic because I had a whole new box of stories to share with mom. And so, the first of two lessons I would learn on this defining day is that the least familiar road on any great adventure will almost always be the most exciting.
The second lesson I learned came at the end of my first day, and at the end of every day in my first year of school. It was Barbasol! It was the only activity in a day full of activities that I looked forward to the most. The teacher would stroll by each of our tables and in front of us she would spray out a nice heaping glob of Barbasol shaving cream. All of us would wait in bouncy anticipation until she gave the word, and at once we would plunge! We smeared shaving cream all over our tables until it literally disappeared. From that year on and throughout grade school, I wondered if there would ever be another year of Barbasol. Even now, with a face full of whiskers, I will sometimes play with shaving cream just to remind me of the second lesson I learned in only the first day of grammar school, and that is that sometimes the form of a thing is more enjoyable than its function.
The third lesson I learned is supplemented by the first and second, and it puts me on track to the point I'm aiming at. Before going any further, however, I should tell you that it would be quite hard for me to adequately convey the feelings of my smaller former self now that I'm all grown up, and seeing as I am more than likely only speaking with fellow adults here, I expect that even if I could there would really be no way for me to convince you of anything beyond what you will expect to be the obvious result of my story. All that to say, it may not be the best illustration I can offer, and I'm sorry that you're stuck with it! The real purpose of all that I will say from this point on falls on you, and even me, to see the difference between two forms of knowledge: intellectual and empirical, and how I believe both are of equal importance to your life, particularly as it pertains to the Christian worldview.
And now to continue with my story...
During the last week or so of our first year lessons, I found myself in the final stages of our term project. Our assignment, which is, or at least was a very common one in those days, was to prepare, nurture, and report the development of a flowering seed sown into the soil of a tiny paper cup ecosystem. Now, despite our teachers wonderful effort to conduct an introductory course in biology, I and several of my classmates knew that what we were doing was something more adventurous and mysterious than simply gathering information from observations.
I remember the day when we first starting seeing signs of life brimming from the dirt in our little paper cups. Every morning until this day, the first thing we would do is run to the cup with our name on it and try to see if we could spot the slightest head of green poking through the surface. On this particular day, almost all of the flowers had sprouted at once. Some of the flower sprouts were bigger than others, while some of the flowers, sadly, hadn't sprouted at all. Needless to say, it was a dismal day for some students. But for others, there was an overwhelming feeling of joy, fascination, and curiosity. To think that something so beautiful could make its way out of such an ugly lifeless little thing as the seed we had planted, it was a purely magical thought for a child, and that was enough. The only thing that was appropriate for us as children to know about a flower sprouting was the knowledge that came by way of the sensation we had when we saw it happening for the first time. This, in its purest form, is called sensationalism. As a philosophy, sensationalism is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and are essentially reducible to sensations. It is a wholly aesthetic way of thinking. It didn't require that I have all the variables to understand it. All that I needed was a childlike faith, a healthy imagination, and the physical ability to feel something in one way or another. For most of us, the lesson had already been communicated by an intensely sensational revelation of truth. We didn't need to know anything else. Or did we?
As I said, there were some of us in the class who didn't get to experience what others experienced. Some of the flowers were not growing, and in several instances this was a direct result of a few children failing to obey instructions. Some of the cups were not properly irrigated, while others were stolen away to dark corners and not kept in the sunlight where they should have been. I remember one of my classmates actually drinking the water he was given to take care of his flower just because he was thirsty. I suppose it would do some good for you at this point to be reminded of our setting. This was a classroom full of inattentive, very impatient, sometimes bad behaving children, and to my mother's dismay, I was often one of them. It seemed that there would always be a need for us to learn a little more about discipline, and discipline cannot be formed by what you feel. Sensationalism is obviously a limited knowledge in that it lacks a proper consideration for reason. To follow sensationalism to its end, a child would grow only to respond to those sensations that pleased him, regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable they were, and he would be consumed by every kind of lustful passion that would lead him into developing a wholly carnal or hedonistic worldview.
As our teacher entered the room on that day, when we were all huddled in a corner over our little cups, It was precisely this voice of reason calling us to our seats. What happened next is something I can only describe as heartbreaking disenchantment. The magical fortress of my imagination, established by no other wisdom than that which comes by way of the mysterious nature of the commonplace, was suddenly being stormed by the veracious armies of reason. I sat there confused with teary wide-eyed disbelief as the teacher began to unload minimizing biological truths about my once bright wide open world. Intellectualism was brought to bear on me that day, and before it had even bloomed, the flower in my cup had been reasoned away. However much I wished to fight it, reason flung wide the doors of my mind that all my senses had welded shut, and as soon as I expected some deep and dark monster to emerge and devour me forever, instead the soft voice of what seemed like a friend came calling, "you are free." Though my senses remained intact, I was released from them into a new truth, or rather BY a new truth. My bright wide open world only became brighter and wider as I now had the grace of knowledge to eventually learn how to quantify the intensity of its brightness and survey the dimensions of its wideness, and this was no less of a good than simply knowing just how beautiful it was. Intellectualism is the doctrine that knowledge is wholly or chiefly derived from pure reason. It is the belief that reason is the final principle of reality. The blemish on an exclusively intellectual worldview, practically speaking, is that there will always be a lack of proper consideration for things that necessarily have real aesthetic or emotional value, and this may result in an extreme form of pragmatism.
Finally, I am at the end of a very long illustration. and I hope I have not bored you completely, but what I have tried to make obvious is that though there are benefits to both empirical and scientific knowledge, you cannot single out either one or the other as a primary doctrine to formulate a Christian worldview and not expect to continually foster ignorance. Obviously, there must be a healthy balance, and this is the third and final lesson I would learn, and will continue to learn for as long as I live.
Let's now go to the key verses I listed at the beginning. If you remember in 1 Cor. 13:11 Paul is explaining his maturity from childhood to adulthood:
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." - 1Cr 13:11
This is a practical message. What he is saying, very simply and perhaps with a much greater degree of sensitivity, is, "grow up! Put away your habits of undisciplined, thoughtless behavior and manage yourselves like adults." At first, the application of this verse to our conversation seems just a bit of a stretch because he isn't saying very much specifically about knowledge. It has more to do with self-discipline. As I said before, however, discipline comes by way of reason, so the intellectual angle is considered here. It is also important to note that he is instructing a Christian audience, so it can be said that his instruction is a basis for establishing a Christian worldview. Now, let's look at this verse in light of the second key text I listed.
"At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." - Matt. 18:3
Despite what may already seem to be a contradiction, remember that what we are looking for here is balance. When inconsistencies seem to arise in scripture, particularly in the Gospels or the Epistles, it usually comes from the trouble in identifying applications for what might or might not be spiritual instruction and what might or might not be practical instruction. The disciples come to Jesus and ask him a really "bright" question that probably started as an argument amongst themselves before they approached him. Jesus responds, as He always does, with the best possible answer.
"…except ye be converted, and become as little children…"
When Christ says, "and become as little children" it should be obvious that this "becoming" will be preceded by its true application, and the words that precede it are, "except ye be converted." So, this "becoming as little children" is synonymous with a conversion experience. It means to imply a second birth whereby our spiritual nature is quickened. So, Christ is giving a spiritual answer to a pracctical question. It's funny, but It seems that Christ often gave answers to questions he WISHED they would have asked rather than the ones they ACTUALLY asked. With his answer, Christ immediately turns this into a spiritual conversation, whereas the disciples were arguing like mere human beings over who would have the highest pedestal in a physical kingdom. He goes on to say, and this must have really deflated His disciples, that if you are not converted and you do not become as little children, you won't even get to enter my kingdom. I've tried to picture the setting of this passage many times, and at the risk of infringing upon a story that may have already been invented by Max Lucado , I think what I've imagined might be an appropriate "what if" scenario. I imagine that Jesus was busy doing something before the disciples came to him. Maybe he was taking a break to sit down, loosen his sandals, and give his weary feet a good rub down. Perhaps not far off from where he sat, a child was perched on the door of his house mimicking Christ's actions and smiling. Every time Jesus would sigh in relief, the child sitting away from him would do the same. Maybe Jesus suddenly noticed, and playfully gave the child other movements to reproduce. Perhaps at one moment Christ bent his shoulders back and stretched his hands high in the air and bellowed out a deep heavy yawn. When I imagine the child doing the same thing, I see Christ smiling and laughing with great delight. The next few minutes or so would be followed by a series of funny faces and silly gestures, and then here would come the bumbling disciples tripping over each other as they race to ask Jesus another ignorant question. I would picture that the child he sat before them that day was the very child who had just been imitating Christ.
Paul doesn't contradict what Christ says by saying, "I gave up childish ways", because the thing he means is intellectual. When Christ says "become as little children", again, he is speaking spiritually of the second birth into the spiritual realm, and in this realm, we do not grow up as quickly as we do in the physical. In the physical realm, we have no say over the matter. Whether we become wiser or increasingly more ignorant, we just keep getting older. In the spiritual realm we spend a great number of days as children learning to live by faith, and this should be an encouraging thought. We get to find delight in our savior by imitating his actions with childlike faith. As I illustrated before, to live as children is to live with great fascination and wonder with no more thought of the world than of that which comes by faith through the knowledge of our senses. 1 Peter 2:2.3 says:
“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
I love the expression here, to taste that the Lord is good, as if you could literally partake of the fruit of that vine called Jesus and gain sensory knowledge of His goodness! It is no mistake that we have figures of speech like this from those who would be the first true imitators of Christ. What they knew of him was a healthy balance of intellectual and empirical knowledge. Think about how often Christ would start out in parables with a "picture this", or how he would compare the Kingdom of God to something as tangible as a mustard seed. His flesh was bread, His blood, wine. Hypocrisy was a beam of wood darting out of someone's eye, and a rich man was a cumbersome camel trying to squeeze his way through the needle's eye. This is riveting stuff! "He who has ears to hear, let him hear", He says. His parables and analogies were tantalizing, but his intellectual wisdom was even more potent. Just when the Pharisees thought him a loon, they would find themselves embarrassed by questions they couldn't answer, or answers they couldn't question. Christ exercised the most appropriate balance of empirical and intelligent knowledge. So, how do we live in this balance?
"And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." Genesis 2:9
"pleasant to the sight…"
It may, or it may not, stand to reason that if God has designed a thing to be pleasant to the sight, that he would also design beings who have eyes to see and therefore know that it is indeed pleasing. If "pleasure of the sight" can be translated to mean "beautiful", and I think it can, then what this verse implies is that beauty is in the framework of creation. Now if the framework is true, and I believe that it is, then beauty is also true. This leads me to believe that if you qualify something as "beautiful", and if that thing you mean is a natural agent of God's creation and not an agent of idolatry or lust, then you are proclaiming a truth that is only as disagreeable as the proclamation, "the sky is blue". So, if beauty is a truth and we were created to know that it is, then by default we should have a set of criteria for understanding and storing this knowledge.
Recently I was talking with my friends Jenny and Darrin about the beauty of nature and how our love for such a gift should in some ways propel us to become better stewards of preservation. Eventually we spun the globes of our worldview on this subject at a spiritual angle, and it came up, from them, that there are some people who believe that trees and all other living things literally have a soul or a spirit nature about them, and it worried me a bit at how much they actually liked the idea. Though I admitted it was not my conviction, I did allow a shorter distance between "me" and "them", at least in our conversation, to say a few things about how beautiful the thought really is. It is true that God instilled in nature examples for spiritual growth and maturation. Christ used these examples often. "Consider the lilies", he said. "I am the vine you are the branches, abide in me." In Psalms, David shouts to all creation "sing and make praises to your God!" and perhaps the most beautiful of them all comes from Job:
"Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind."- Job 12:7-10
I did not wish for my friends to go on believing in “spirit trees” if indeed they were hinting that this was their honest conviction, and I knew that, in love, I could have tried to “correct their path”, but I didn’t. Instead, all I could think about was the story I told you earlier. All I could see was the beautiful mystery of things that grow, even from paper cups, and instead of trying to tell them “no, wrong! Look! Reason!” I worshiped our Creator in their company and thanked him for the beautiful reminders of the grace and love demonstrated in all created things and for sending us His Son in whom ALL of the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through whom ALL things have been reconciled unto Himself whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of His cross (Col. 1:19, 20), and I was glad that I had not tried to be reasonable! I was glad that I didn't behave as that kid in my grammar school class did and drink the water that was given for the flower because it provided the logical means to quench my own thirst. You see, I believe that Intellectualism must not be allowed to throw the balance away from empirical knowledge when the souls of real people may be weighed simply by how well we Christians have applied ourselves to the truth of beauty.
I always try to remind myself to take the time to exercise and balance my mind, and realize that I have always had the freedom to believe that there is still something mysterious and enchanting about this world. It may even be good practice to repeat the exercise. Maybe I could plant a flower in a cup. Nurture it, and just for the sake of a healthy imagination, try to believe that somewhere in the seed, in the soil, there's a soul. Maybe I'll talk to it, as the passage in Job says. See if there's something it can teach me.
"...good for food"
At last, I would like to recover intellectualism from the mud of my obviously empirical bias and wipe it clean for us to look at. Most of us who have been fortunate enough to grow up in the school systems have very little trouble being, or at least acting, like good intellectuals. That is the point of school really. We take the classes, the teachers teach, we learn, we apply, we teach, someone else learns and the beautiful cycle repeats itself over and over again. I can't remember who said it, but put very simply, if we're not learning we're not moving, if we're not moving we're not living, and if we're not living, well then we are dead. The values of intellectual knowledge preserve and sustain the values of life. Being able to reason intellectually opens doors that lead us into making the kinds of decisions that drastically change our lives, and the lives of other people, for the better. As Christians, the freedom that comes from intellectual knowledge gives us clarity to discover our identity in Christ. As the trials of life unfold us and transform us from one degree of glory to the next, we become wiser and more capable human beings. Intellectualism is also the foundation for apologetics, which is basically a discourse for the defense of Christianity. This is a crucial tool for us as believers in a world where ignorance is bliss, truth is relative, and tolerance is, somehow, tolerable. Just as we look at the fruit of a tree and know that it is good for food, we must intellectually identify that which is good doctrine, and that which is bad. Having an intellectual basis for how and why you stand for what is right is of far greater worth than being a static figure in the crowd content with imitating and entertaining the desires of your piers rather than fulfilling the desires of an Almighty God. As Christian intellectuals, we must be very careful to maintain our balance with beauty. If you lose your balance and have to fall off the wagon on one side of the road or the other, make sure it's on the side of beauty. What I mean to say is that if you have to spend more time thinking one way or the other, then I would say it is better to be caught up in beauty than to be caught up in intellectualism. I know from experience, that losing your balance into intellectualism makes you a bitter cynic, and it's hard to get hope back, much less have compassion over the needs of others, after you've fallen off to that side of the road. Balance my friends, balance!
What started as a simple journal entry seems to have developed into an essay, and for that I am extremely sorry, though extremely grateful. Sorry, because I know you'll think that much of what you just read was one, or two, or all of the following: boring, predictable, scattered, obtrusive, overblown, LOOOOONG, arrogant, misinformed, and virtually unreadable. I am grateful, however, because for me it was good healthy fun. I love the chance to write, especially when I know I'll always have another one! God has blessed me this week while writing and thinking of all these things, and I hope it somehow manages to bless you. I'll leave you with a fantastic quote from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy that I think is very appropriate. Have a great week!
"…The thing that I mean can be seen, for instance, in children when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again" and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
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