A Return to "Running": Giving Up "Stuff" For Lent

Looks like a bit of dust has collected on this blog since the last post.  A lot has happened in the last year and a half: I started a new job, got married, produced a play from a script I had to adapt completely, and became a father.  

With my new wife.

Proud dad moment.

Quite a bit to take my mind off "Running the Human Race."  But I hope it has been as much a time of running the human race for you as it has been for me and my new little family.

There have been many, many changes that we have had to get used to in this time--many new dynamics, many new situations, lots of new responsibilities--and among them, the question of how we as a family participate in the life of the Church.  Today being Ash Wednesday, we have had to decide as a family what we will be doing for Lent.

There are a number of ways of going about Lent, that season where the Church calls us to prepare for Easter, and the Church herself is rich with advice and examples for us to participate most fruitfully; nevertheless, there is one aspect of Lent that has been particularly intriguing to me over the last two or three years.

Traditionally, the Church recommends the threefold practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  That is, she asks the faithful to reinvigorate their application to their prayers, make more time for conversing with Our Lord, while applying certain disciplines to ourselves such as going without food (or going with less food than usual), and sacrificing of our possessions what another may have a greater need for.

As a child, of course, the practice that was most emphasized was that of fasting.  Not that we actually fasted--we all had full servings at every meal--our fasting took the form of giving things up.  Most years it was sweets: candy, desserts, or soda.  Some years, when we were feeling more inspired around Ash Wednesday, it was something we held more dear to our hearts, like movies or computer games.  And, of course, there was a bit of the gamesmanship that you might expect to find in a household of six boys: nobody wanted to be one-upped by the ambitious brother who made a significantly greater sacrifice for Lent.  Whatever "stuff" a brother was giving up, I had to give it up too.

Although "giving stuff up" seemed as normal as breathing to us, a more outside view would likely have seen it as strange.  A normal 8-year-old would much more likely play with his favorite toy than put it up on a shelf for forty days.  But we gave stuff up in those days not because it made particularly logical sense to us--nothing really makes particularly logical sense to an 8-year-old, even if they think it does--we did it because our parents told us it was a good thing to do.  And we trusted our parents in this case, as we did with pretty much every case.

But as we grew older, and underwent that awkward process of discovering a greater and greater ability to be the master of our own mind and actions, we began to realize (at least implicitly) that our "giving stuff up" mentality was incomplete.  

For my part, I began to realize that when I was fasting from things that I really enjoyed, I developed a greater ability to take control over many of my actions.  I recognized that the discipline of Lent had made me a stronger person.  So I began to take on the sacrifices of Lent as challenges--tests of my personal strength.  The better the challenge and the better I fulfilled it, the better person I thought myself to be.

And, as I approached Lent in the first years of my adulthood wanting to have as complete an understanding and as full a participation as possible, I realized that even my teenage understanding of Lent was insufficient.  Fasting had become sort of a "personality weightlifting," making my personality stronger, but not more complete.  And it made Lent all about me and my needs, not really about Christ and growing in a friendship with him.

And so, over the last couple of years, I have tried to discover some of the many ways in which Lent is intended to be a time where we grow our relationship with Christ.  Of course, it is important that we give up things that we truly enjoy, but we don't give them up simply to "give stuff up"; rather, by abandoning our attachment to good things, we give ourselves the ability to abandon our attachment to things that are not good.  Furthermore, when we put good things to the side, we make space in our lives for a greater attachment to Christ.  Such a practice does in fact make us stronger, and, over time, it makes us more completely human.  But in becoming more completely human, we become more capable of loving Christ completely.

But there's more.  2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ died in terrible agony, perhaps the most excruciating suffering a person has ever endured.  He died for every single person, that they might rise above their sins and even death itself to be perfectly united with God.  And in that moment, although he was abandoned by all except a few of his earthly friends, he could see every single moment in history: every moment when his friendship was rejected and abandoned--and his agony was worsened--every moment when his friendship was accepted and reciprocated--and his agony was as nothing.  So as we take up the Lenten discipline and when we accept our sufferings, we can unite our pains with his pains, we can show him the compassion he was so cruelly denied, we can learn from him the true cost of sin, and we can thereby forge an even stronger friendship with him.

Lent isn't about giving stuff up.  Giving up stuff in Lent is about Christ.

The Challenge of Thomistic Philosophy

I hope my readers have been enjoying the time off since my last blog post as much as I have.  It’s good to take a vacation every so often.

Gearing back up for another academic year, I have been able to knock some of the rust off and bring you a new post.  It is, however, the beginning of the “season,” and this post is more of a warm-up jaunt than an end-of the season playoff effort.  I hope you enjoy.

As many of you know, I majored in theology in college.  It was a bit of an involved decision between the regina scientiorum and the ancilla theologiae.  One of the draws of philosophy was that it had a rather robust department, and very excellent professors.  But it was a conversation about philosophy with one of the theology faculty that made me change my mind and do theology.

Say “philosophy” nowadays and people will take you to mean anything from a personal approach to cooking broccoli to The Matrix.  But at Christendom College, and a good deal of other Catholic colleges, “philosophy” generally means Plato, Aristotle, and most importantly, Thomas Aquinas.

Also known as “The Angelic Doctor,” Thomas Aquinas has the distinction of being one of the most revered minds in the Catholic intellectual tradition.  From Leo XIII to John Paul the Great, there have been many people around the world who have chosen to adhere to the bellowings of the “Dumb Ox.”

Students at Christendom College are exposed to much of the writings of Thomas Aquinas in the philosophy “core curriculum.”  And while at first I was rather taken by the erudition and clarity of thought in the very excellent Thomist philosophers at that school, it was ultimately the thinking of the greatest Thomist philosopher that made me major in theology.  No, I’m not talking about Henri de Lubac; I’m talking about Thomas Aquinas.

In the very beginning of St. Thomas’ magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, he discusses the relationship between philosophy and theology, which he calls Sacred Doctrine (S.T. I Q. 1 a. 1-2).  A few of his points can be summarized as follows:

1.  Philosophy and theology study the same thing.  Theology literally means “the study of God.”  Philosophy has a division in it that studies God (natural theology).  Later he calls those truths of the faith that philosophy can demonstrate the “preambles to the articles of faith” (S.T. I Q.2 a. 1).

2.  Philosophy and theology are different in the means through which knowledge is obtained.  Philosophy gains knowledge through man’s experience and his exercise of reason, with the use of logic.  Theology gains knowledge by God’s supernatural action called Revelation.

3.  Theology contains certain truths which are above the ability of human reason to come to know.  These truths, accepted by faith, are necessary to guide man to his final end.

Based on these principles, it would seem that a true Thomist philosopher would be able to study God, but would not be able to make use of any principle from revelation, and would not be able to demonstrate articles of faith (those revealed truths that surpass human capacity to discover).

For me, there was an enormous evangelistic appeal to doing philosophy in this way.  The exclusion of revelation makes arguments about God more accessible to the unbeliever.  The way I figured it, the person who rejects the God of faith could be led by philosophy to an acceptance of the God of the philosopher, and thereby to the God of faith.

But ultimately, I think that this approach to philosophy is internally inconsistent, and opposed to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas himself.

In the first place, a Christian who is a Thomist cannot really exclude revelation.  If he really is a Christian, he believes in the Incarnation, and any number of things on the spectrum of revealed truth.  Contrary to certain attitudes in modern society, what you think actually influences who you are, and who you are influences how you act.  So a Christian doing Thomism cannot actually exclude principles of revelation from his philosophy.  He may construct arguments, perhaps even very long ones, but at the foundations of what he is pursuing, why he is pursuing, and how he has chosen to pursue it will have been profoundly influenced by revelation.

Imagine the unbeliever who has entered into a dialogue with the Christian Thomist under the agreement to stay away from topics of faith or revelation.  How would he react when he discovers this hidden, unconscious element of Christianity that has been guiding and shaping the direction of their conversations all along?

In the second place, Thomas Aquinas himself did not take this approach to philosophy. 

It is interesting to note that the flagship source for Thomistic philosophy contains the word “theology” in the two word title.  The other word isn’t “philosophy.”  As a matter of fact, Thomas wrote the Summa in the mid 1200s primarily as an introduction to theology for students and seminarians at the University of Paris. 

Although the Summa is very clearly a theological work, the bent isn’t purely theological.  What’s called the “First Part of the Second Part” is largely philosophical, with its treatises on actions, passions, habits and law.  But the fact that there is a harmonious blend of philosophy and theology indicates the absence of a very strong division between the two sciences.  Philosophy was known as the “handmaiden of theology” exactly because it could be so useful in helping make more understandable or communicable the concepts of revelation.

So far, we have seen that theology must be part of Thomism, and that it is inseparable from philosophy.  But St. Thomas goes further than that in his estimation of the worth of theology: he calls it “necessary.”

It was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation.  (S.T. I Q.1 a. 1).

The necessity of revelation to man’s final end means the necessity of theology in Thomistic philosophy.

But if we are to abandon the principle that reason cannot admit revelation into its processes, how can we continue to call what we're doing "philosophy"?

Many good Thomists will say that the use of philosophy as the handmaiden of theology gives enough grounds for the name philosophy.  And, in the proper Thomistic sense, that certainly can be the case.

But the modern sense of “philosophy” certainly might take issue with this dynamic.

In modern terms, “philosophy” is the action of Critical Reason whose brilliance is dimmed by an admixture of impurities, such as superstition, bias, or faith.  Reason must be purged of these crutches until man can stand on the grounds of his own reason alone, the master of his fate.

In an era where not only is Thomas and his intellectual predecessors rejected as backwards, but where faith is directly targeted for assassination, the correct response cannot stop with a defense of Thomistic “philosophy,” especially when some might argue it doesn’t even begin there.  Christians everywhere need to find real and convincing grounds in this modern world on which to defend the reality, the beneficial nature, and the necessity of faith.

Now go read Lumen Fidei.

Zombimania

Zombies are everywhere!

There are zombie books, zombie T-shirts, zombie movies, zombie TV shows, zombie memes, zombie video games, zombie party games...  

But not all zombies are alike.  There are zombies and then there are zombies.  Some zombies are scary, some are pitiful.  Some zombies are serious, some are funny.  Some zombies are tormented, some are just sad.

But there's one thing that zombies have in common: they are everywhere.  That's kind of what they do. 

It's a familiar story.

Everything in the world is normal. The sun is bright, the earth is turning, and people are living normal lives.  All is peaceful except for a few well-placed subtle foreshadowings of the coming emotional roller coaster complete with disgusting make-up work, discordant violin hits, and all the visceral fear associated with a full zombie apocalypse.

But somehow there's a hero.  For some reason that writers get paid to come up with, a small band of individuals are spared from the mysterious infestation and begin a fight of survival.  But things go from bad to worse.  Fragile reassurances of security are systematically brushed aside by the final onslaught of partially decayed yet fully persistent, brain-eating living dead.  And the last living humans on earth are faced with the all-too-likely prospect that the human race will soon become extinct.

It's all too familiar.  Like a nightmare.  Actually, exactly like a nightmare.

A malevolent threat that throbs in the background colors your whole world with fear.  Feeble attempts to prepare for it or avoid it are futile.  You try to run away, but it is everywhere.  Your feet are like lead and your legs are bogged down, but it is coming.  The end is near.  They are coming.

Some people wouldn't call it a nightmare.  They'd call it fascinating, absorbing, even fun.  A zombie movie that efficiently carries the viewer along a suspenseful plot to an original conclusion is applauded as "a good ride,” or a masterpiece of “good entertainment.”  These people wouldn’t call it a nightmare because they would call it a roller coaster.

But what happens when you ride a roller coaster a couple of times?  It becomes less intimidating, and more comfortable.  So you look for a taller roller coaster with more intimidating twists and turns.  But then you get comfortable with that, and need a more intimidating coaster, and so forth.  And the more and more you look for more and more intimidating roller coasters, the less and less you are able to enjoy them.  Can anyone seriously maintain that deliberately excited morbid fascination with the ugly leads to anything but a ravenous scavenging for scraps of enjoyment by the pursuit of uglier and uglier things?  

Oh, sure, there is a place for ugliness:  it should spur us to turn away from it and pursue what is beautiful.  But that means that we need to turn away from it.  Not plop down on a La-Z Boy with a bag of chips and a can of beer to glut ourselves with the ugliness. 

Is there anyone who would call this good for the human race?  

Zombie ugliness is very powerful.  It plays simultaneously on our fear of death, our fear of being corrupted into something horrible, our fear of distortions of the human frame, and our fear of Armageddon.  That makes for a very powerful emotional cocktail.  And while a balanced, cultured approach to drinking hard liquor is possible, if you work hard at it and are very controlled in the way that you drink, the fact is that too many people take a binge drinking approach.  They get hard drunk.

And when you're drunk, it's very hard to run in a straight line.

I call it a nightmare.  It’s scary.  It’s revolting.  I want to wake up and find myself safe and sound.

And I am tempted to put a Freudian spin on it.  Could it be that the fascination with zombies is but a subconscious echo of the effects of sin?  

Without God, we become sort of spiritual zombies.  Sin kills the life of God in our souls.  True, we are still capable of moving around and doing things, but we are not truly alive.  We are tortured by a hunger that we cannot satisfy.  We search and search for true nourishment, sometimes consuming our own intellects and the intellects of those around us, but to no avail.  We then become contagious, spreading our pain and despair to those around us, putting them in danger of becoming no better than ourselves.  And when we do, we huddle together, not because we like each other’s company, but because we know that there’s nothing more we can do to harm each other. 

But not everybody is a zombie.  There are those who are actually alive; who are actually human, and striving to stay so.  They have God alive in them.  And they are tasked not with shutting themselves up in a fortress and blasting away any zombie within a hundred miles, although that might be necessary for a while until they learn how to be more precise with the defense systems.  Rather, they are entrusted with the means to keep themselves alive; and even to come back to life after death.  And they are charged with reaching out to the zombies and bringing them back to life too.  At least until Armageddon.

Maybe I’m reading into the zombie mythology too much. 

Or maybe I’m capturing it and using it to preach the gospel.

Don't be a zombie.

Running the Human Race

I think the best way to start off a new blog is by explaining its name.  It helps to inform the reader of the underlying philosophy not just of each blog posts, but of why post in the first place.  And yes, the title of this blog is a pun.

I have frequently been accused of being a guy in love with corny jokes. And when I come up with a particularly good one, I like to share it.  So it is true that the first part of the three-fold motivation for naming this blog is somewhat selfish and prideful.  But that fits very nicely with the direction of the blog anyway.

The other two parts come from the double meaning of the pun.

Anyone who has ever entered a particularly messy room, complete with overflowing trash can, unkempt bedclothes, mangled heaps of laundry, and empty soda cans hidden in creative nooks like inconvenient Easter eggs, or has tried to work with a business that just doesn't return phone calls except to give you the extension for the other guy you’re supposed to talk to, refuses to write intelligent e-mails, and gets your order wrong anyway, knows what it feels like to stare into the face of disorder.

When things are out of place or not working properly, or people appear to lack the ability or motivation to execute their assigned tasks sufficiently, people can feel the urge to throw up their hands in desperation and shout, “Who the hell is in charge around here, anyway?!”

The same can be true of the world around us.

Faced with the many problems in society such as hunger, disease, improper education, or hatred, cruelty, or violence, people can feel the urge to  throw up their hands in desperation and cry out, “Who the hell is in charge around here, anyway?!”

The answer to this question has taken a number of different forms: some men see this disorder as evidence that an all good, all powerful God cannot exist; some men view this disorder like labor pains--and the world is pregnant with something greater than our imagination can grasp.

But both answers demand something of men.

In the first place, if an atheist does not want to slip into nihilism, he must decide that there is some obtainable good in this world.  And since there is nobody who can achieve that good for him, he must stand up like a man and achieve it himself.  And when that obtainable good is some good for all of mankind, he must make himself a part of that effort to achieve that obtainable good.  He must place himself in charge of the human race.  He must run the show.  It is his vision that guides society, and it is his efforts that accomplish its goals.  He must run the human race.

The second part of the motivation for the name of this blog comes from this: I can identify with this sentiment.    The question of suffering is a difficult one to answer.  I can understand the motivation of people who have no room in their philosophy for a divine, all-powerful, all-good being when it drives them to accomplish good things.  I am impressed with intellectually honest atheists that somehow remain beyond the event horizon of the gaping black hole that is nihilism.  

But in the second place, when a man grants that God is all-good, and all-powerful, yet He permits suffering for some unclear reason, he believes that some greater good is coming--that age of perfect justice, peace, and harmony where the lion shall lie down with the lamb, etc.  Some men think God will work out this good on His own accord, and all we have to do is keep ourselves clean and wait for the rapture.

But I think that the God who made the world, created man, placed him in the garden and said to him: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth," (Gen.1:28, RSV) expects man to exercise that dominion in cooperation with His divine plan for our happiness.

And so, while I say that believing men should stand up like men and work towards this age of perfect justice, I do not say that this is "running the human race."  Rather, it is a cooperation with God in the exercise of those gifts and duties given to men by God.

And so finally we come to the third motivation.

What does it mean to "cooperate with God in the exercise of those gifts and duties given to men by God"?  Since to answer this question in any kind of specific manner would take a series of blog posts, I shall reserve specifics for later.  But fundamentally, if we are using those gifts and fulfilling those duties that are ours by gift, then we are being human.  And if we are using all of our gifts, and fulfilling all of our duties, we are being fully human.  And that is our goal.

Achieving that goal takes effort.  Making that effort takes dedication, regular re-commitment, training, endurance, patience, and quiet perseverance.  It takes fighting off laziness and mediocrity.  Sometimes it means working through some disgusting muck.  It takes the desire for perfection that will not be satisfied by anything less.  It is a life-long task that changes the very fabric of our life.  In fact, it is very much like the experience of a committed runner.  

Achieving the goal of a 5-minute mile, or a 15-minute 5K takes effort.  Making that effort takes dedication, regular re-commitment, training, endurance, patience, and quiet perseverance.  It takes fighting off laziness and mediocrity.  Sometimes it takes working through some disgusting muck.  It takes the desire for perfection that will not be satisfied by anything less.  It is a life-long task that changes the very fabric of your life.

There is little more explanation needed to indicate the third part of the motivation of this blog.  It is in fact the primary motivation: the common mission of "running the human race."

In the cyber-pages of this blog, I hope to bring to you some of my thoughts and encouragements that have helped me to continue running this race, as well as questions that I and others have struggled with on this race.  

Feel free to leave comments below, continue the discussion on my Facebook page, or shoot me an e-mail.  Or, as probably is the best of all, call me or talk to me next time you see me.  I look forward to a near future of irregular but helpful blogging!

God bless.