Being Good Enough

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

Obsessing on being good means that we are centering our attention on something that God had never intended for us to know anything about in the first place, let alone focus on.
Most people understand that when Adam and Eve found out about sin from eating fruit off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they had done a “bad” thing. But this tree with the forbidden fruit was not just the tree of the knowledge of evil. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We were not supposed to know about good any more than we were supposed to know about evil.

In his book Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out that being preoccupied with good and evil is abnormal for human beings. In the beginning, Adam and Eve knew only God. Good and evil were not an issue for them at all. In fact, Adam and Eve didn’t even know such concepts existed and God warned them not to find out. But Adam and Eve disobeyed.

With their discovery of the meaning of good and evil, they suddenly became “like God.” They had become originators of good and evil themselves. Before the Fall they did not have an identity apart from God. After the Fall, they had cut off their relationship with Him altogether.

As a consequence of Adam and Eve’s poor choice, we, their decedents, find ourselves similarly alienated from God. Instead of seeing God, we can only see ourselves. We were made in the image of God and drew our life entirely from our origin in God. Before the Fall we recognized ourselves as being chosen and loved by God. Our shame and sadness since Adam and Eve’s choice is a consequence of our estrangement from God. This estrangement can only be overcome through forgiveness and a restoration of fellowship with God through Jesus.

Bonhoeffer writes that “The freedom of Jesus is not about arbitrary choice of one amongst innumerable possibilities; it consists, on the contrary, precisely in the complete simplicity of his action…[which is] only by one thing. This one thing Jesus calls the will of God…The will of God is his life….He lives and acts not by the knowledge of good and evil but by the will of God. There is only one will of God. In it the origin is recovered…” (Ethics, pp. 33-34). Most importantly, in union with God there is no knowledge outside of God, there is no knowledge of good or evil, and there is no knowledge of evil toward us. “Knowledge of Jesus Christ implies ignorance of …[our] own good and evil…to the exclusion of all other knowledge” (Ethics, p. 43).

There’s a paradoxical passage that suggests we shouldn’t notice our good deeds at all: the left hand shouldn’t know what the right hand is doing (Matthew 6:3-4). How in the world would we pull that off?

By the reconciliation that comes through Christ.

Instead of thinking of good and bad, we simply focus on God. Ideally, in Christ, we are restored to the place of innocence that Adam and Eve had before they made their wrong choice. In Christ, God hits the reset button and we return to the factory original settings.

Bonhoeffer argues that no action we take should be intended to reflect back on us, our character, or our reputation. We must, for the sake of the moment, unreservedly surrender all self-directed wishes and desires. It is the other person who becomes the focus of all our attention. Not us. In ethical action, the left hand really must be unaware of what the right hand is doing if the right hand is to do anything ethical at all. Otherwise, our so-called good deeds become something else altogether: just a pat on our own backs. In fact, we generally do good only because it benefits us. It is hard to see that any true altruism—what might be called selfless action—exists in human affairs.

Bonhoeffer illustrates this notion of selfless action—true altruism—by contrasting the behavior of Jesus in the New Testament with that of the Pharisees. He writes that the Pharisee is someone for “whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance.” Each moment of his life, the Pharisee chooses between what is good and what is evil (Ethics, p.30). Likewise, the Pharisee can confront no one without evaluating him in terms of his behavior, good or bad (Ethics, p.31). For the Pharisee, all judgments are moral judgments, and everyone teeters on the brink of condemnation.

Bonhoeffer points out that Jesus refused to see the world according to the black and white distinctions of the Pharisee. He threw away many of the legal distinctions the Pharisees worked so hard to maintain. Jesus let his disciples eat with unwashed hands. He healed a woman on the Sabbath, in violation of the prohibition of working on that day. Jesus exhibited a freedom from the law in everything he did and in fact never shied from tweaking the Pharisees notions of right and wrong.

Unlike the Pharisees, Jesus did not concern himself with the goodness or badness of those he helped. He did not care about the personal moral worth of those with whom he interacted. He cared only about the well being of those with whom he came in contact. He exhibited no other concern. He is the paradigm of selfless action, and the exact opposite of the Pharisees. For the Pharisee every gesture was fundamentally self-reflective. Jesus loved others, where the Pharisee loved only himself.

In one of his critical diatribes against the Pharisees, Jesus pointed out that tithing cumin and mint was fine, but one should not loose sight of the more important issue of love and mercy; doing the tithing without the love and mercy was the problem, not the tithing itself. The attitude behind the actions seems to matter to God.

Paul writes of the importance of love and argues in 1 Corinthians 13 that if we give all our money away, die for the faith, know everything, and have no love, then all we did was just so much empty noise. Shakespeare perhaps echoes this in the famous lines from his play Macbeth:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing” (Shakespeare, Macbeth V,v, 17)

Dogs are very good “Christians.” No dog has ever gambled away its rent money, frequented a bar, used bad language, or smoked cigarettes. But of course, perhaps this illustrates that being good really isn’t what it’s all about, is it? Being good does not make a dog a Christian, now does it? Perhaps focusing on behavior misses the point completely?

Is love dependent on the actions of the one loved? The lover does not see his beloved as she is, but as love says she is. Love always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres, and so on. And so the lover sees his beloved as the ideal; she is always without blemish, always thin, always wrinkle free; the hair never grays, the body never sags. He loves each and every bit of her because it is hers. An ideal lover never sees his beloved any other way but as flawless. He cannot conceive that she can be anything but perfect. She is all that matters, and when she smiles at him and gives herself, then all other problems fade to insignificance. There is no fear, no sorrow, no suffering in the arms of the beloved.

A lot of what is promoted and preached is tantamount to adding to the gospel and is in a sense simple Gnosticism. “Well and good that you have the gospel; now you must add to that our hidden, special knowledge. You must do these things in order to really have the blessings of God, to open the floodgates of happiness, to gain the good things that God would like to give you if only you weren’t so bad or stupid.”

And yet we read that we have the kingdom of God now (Luke 17:21), that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), and instead of choosing to enjoy that, we let the circumstances of our life distract us, robbing us of the joy we might otherwise experience.

Two children I saw in Disneyland once. One was holding his father’s hand, jumping up and down, looking at all the bright things around, laughing and happy, pointing at a horse walking by, and enjoying the moment. The other was holding her father’s hand, crying, and pointing at a cotton candy booth, miserable because her father wasn’t getting her any cotton candy. For both, their circumstances were actually the same. One chose to focus on the fact that he was in Disneyland. The other chose to focus on her lack of cotton candy. One chose to be happy. One chose to be miserable. They were both in Disneyland nevertheless. The only difference was their perspective.

Making your life as pleasant as possible, improving your circumstances, getting an education, learning to balance your checkbook, mowing your lawn, these are all good things to do. Just don’t imagine that they have anything to do with your relationship to God or that somehow in the doing of these “good” things, you can somehow get more of God or more of his blessings. How could that even be possible? You have the Holy Spirit living inside of you; you are a child of God; you will be with him forever. What more do you suppose there is?

The issue for so many Christians is the lists of do’s and don’ts in the Bible. They read that they must be filled with the spirit and avoid all sorts of evil: don’t gossip, don’t kill, don’t steal, be kind, don’t stare at Sheila and certainly don’t enjoy what you see, and whatever you do, stay away from that ice cream! And so they get the sense that if they aren’t doing these things and if they aren’t avoiding those things then Hell awaits them—or at the very least they will spend a lifetime sitting on God’s shelf as a vessel of dishonor.

But doing or not doing is like balancing our checkbook. Although it’s a really good idea, it never increases the amount of money in our account. We may have less trouble, our lives may be sweeter, we may be happier if we avoid killing our neighbor. And if we don’t drool over Sheila, then maybe her husband won’t beat us up and she won’t slap us silly. But it’s like knowing and obeying the laws of physics. Making allowance for gravity has nothing to do with whether you will make God love you more. But it’ll keep you from ruining that nice china tea set. Ethics are like that.

Why do we keep thinking that how we act is going to have anything to do with how much God loves us? Did Jesus die because we did something to deserve it? No, he did it because of his love for us; it had nothing to do with our ethics or lack thereof. It had nothing to do with begging or asking or faith. It had everything to do with God’s love for us and the price he paid on the cross.

See how easy this is?

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Occam’s Razor

Posted on February 4, 2012 by

William of Occam was a famous fourteenth century schoolman and philosopher, born at Ockham in Surrey, England. A Franciscan, his fundamental principle was that “entities must not be unnecessarily multiplied.” What did he mean by this? In coming up with an explanation for any situation, the simplest explanation that adequately covers all the facts is more likely to be correct than a competing explanation which is more complicated. One might call this the K.I.S.S. principle: keep it simple, stupid. It is more commonly known as Occam’s Razor, from its ability to cut through to the truth.

To take a silly example, which do you suppose is the right explanation for your friend exiting the library carrying a stack of books? That your friend has murdered the librarian, stolen the books, and intends to use them for kindling in her fireplace? Or, that she checked out the books and intends to read them?

The two theories both explain what you see: your friend walking out of the library. But, which is the simplest explanation?

And yet, how swift we are to cling to the worst possible explanations for most of what we see. Someone fails to send us a birthday card on our birthday and so obviously it proves he doesn’t really love us. If we were important to him, he would have sent us a card. As if we have perfect memories and have never forgotten to do anything for the people we love.

Upon learning that an underling had failed to fulfill a task, so the story goes, the men around Napoleon Bonaparte were ready to accuse the underling of treason. Napoleon’s response was instead to comment, “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.” I suspect, therefore, that most of the problems we have with service at restaurants, with merchants, the DMV and the various utility companies are issues of incompetence, rather than malice. Of course this might mean that sometimes, at least, the problems we have are of our own making. After all, we should know ourselves well enough to realize that we too, have been guilty of thoughtlessness, of pulling into a lane without looking and cutting someone off, of failing to notice a stop sign, of mindlessly blundering into the express lane at the supermarket when we had a basket loaded with enough groceries to feed an army.

So next time you are ready to believe the worst, next time you hear a complicated excuse, ask yourself, “is there an easier way to explain what happened?” Do I need to invoke fairies or is there a more mundane explanation? Chances are, if your toddler tells you that the reason the cookies are missing from the cookie jar, it’s because Dodger, your black cat had a hankering for chocolate chips, you’ll think there’s a more likely reason the cookies are gone. Especially when one considers the chocolate and crumbs on the toddler’s face. Take that mindset with you into the wider world.

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Quote for the Day

Posted on February 4, 2012 by

No one wants advice – only corroboration.

–John Steinbeck

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Soyuz

Posted on February 3, 2012 by

Learn all about Russia's workhorse Soyuz space capsule in this SPACE.com infographic.
Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Posted in Science, Space, Technology | 2 Comments

Distractions

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

Earnest Hemmingway has been quoted as saying that before he could write anything, he first needed to organize his sock drawer. Douglas Adams, the late author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, once commented that he loved deadlines: “they make such a nice whooshing noise as they rush by.”

The sad reality of the writing life is that you’re on your own when you’re a writer. You do not have someone peering over your shoulder to make sure that you’re working. No program in your computer logs your keystrokes to make sure that your productivity is high. Your editor is on the other side of the country, or in some cases, the other side of the planet. She has no way of knowing that when she talks to you on the phone you’re really just working another game of solitaire instead of proofreading those galleys she just sent. Besides, they aren’t due for another three weeks, so what’s the rush?

The other problem is that most writers are somewhat creative: we have great imaginations that are quick to take us on flights of fancy that unhappily have nothing to do with the current plot we’re trying to outline.

Worse, many writers are also given to bouts of depression, which plays havoc with our ability to concentrate. And writers, like everyone else, have the normal things in life that get in the way of productivity. But unlike most people, we don’t have an office somewhere to escape from our day to day problems. And given that we work alone, we have no one to get in the way of our thoughts, which pull us every which way.

While I’m sure factory workers, engineers and office workers face endless distractions, whether they be interminable meetings or noisy co-workers, I know for a fact that they are not going to have the doorbell ringing, dryer buzzing, dishwasher beeping, or toilet gurgling to worry about. If you’re in your house and you know you have a broken light switch needing your attention, it’s a whole lot harder to ignore it when it’s just down the hall from you, instead of a thirty minute commute.

When you’re struggling to get the dialogue just right in chapter ten, the need to prune your rose bushes may suddenly intrude and seem far more important. When you’re staring at a blank screen, no words coming to your mind, the realization that you’re low on milk may prompt a sudden trek to the grocery.

And when you hear the rustle of the mail arriving in your mailbox outside, how can you resist going to see what’s there? After all, aren’t you expecting another check from your publisher?

Then there’s the coffee to brew, the lunch to make, and after lunch, one suddenly realizes just how tired one is. After all, we had to get up at 5:30 to start getting the family off to school and I know I didn’t get eight hours last night on my bed, so my bed is now calling to me, complaining that I haven’t been showing it enough attention.
So how is it that a writer ever gets anything done? Given that there are something on the order of a hundred thousand books published in the United States in any given year, writers must find a way to overcome all their distractions.

What do I do?

Deadlines help, whether imposed by one’s editor, or self-imposed. Despite what Douglas Adams so humorously wrote, the reality is that deadlines are like the due dates on your bills. If you fail to get what’s demanded on time, there are often unpleasant circumstances to face. Given that writers, no less than most people, thrive on pain-avoidance, we try to meet our deadlines. If you don’t yet have a contract, and you’re simply freelancing on a book, then you need to set deadlines for yourself, and you need to take them just as seriously. I try to set both long range and daily goals. For instance, I have as a daily objective that I write ten pages of new fiction every day. On top of that, I attempt to rewrite at least an equal number of pages every day of previously written material. I also limit myself to doing this but five days a week.

Long tern goals include deciding that I will have a given novel finished, including all rewrites, by a certain date in the future. For instance, my current long term goal is to finish my historical novel, Spring of Goliath, by December 1.

The upside of having such clearly defined goals is that I then know when I’ve finished my work for each day and so I can resist the temptation of just sitting at my computer and continuing to flail away at stuff: It is very easy, when working from home as an author, to fail to make a clean distinction between your workday and the rest of your day. Not having a long commute makes it hard to separate work from time off.

Which, I think, is part of the reason for writers becoming so easily distracted. Without goals and clearly defined boundaries, you’re never quite sure where you are or what you’re doing. With goals, I find that I can focus much more easily. I can see where I’m going, and I know how to get there. Distractions then are not the barriers they otherwise might be.

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Quote for the Day

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising (“but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…”) and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.

–Neil Gaiman

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Quote for the Day

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.

–Carl Sagan

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And They Lived Happily Ever After

Posted on January 30, 2012 by

My wife and I met while she was an undergraduate and I was a graduate student. Many of our dates were spent at Denny’s eating French fries and studying to all hours. Even when we went places, we tended to study along the way, with us quizzing one another from flashcards. We got married a week after I received my master’s degree from UCLA and so we lived happily ever after.

What follows the phrase, “and they lived happily ever after,” is, of course, a story in itself. Achieving a goal, having a dream come true, graduating, winning the girl—these are all wonderful things. But then you go to bed and you get up the next morning and the cat is complaining that its dish is empty. Then you discover you forgot to get more shampoo and so you end up washing your hair with bar soap, which is a sliver and you realize you need to get more of that, too.

When you get the dream job, the one you’ve worked your whole life for, you soon discover that it is, in fact, still a job. There’s a joy in looking forward to the dream, a joy in talking about the dream, a joy in celebrating the dream, that in the cold light of day simply turns into hard work. We all know that life is not the movies, but too often we spend an inordinate amount of time reaching for the fantasy and finding ourselves disappointed with the reality. Real life lacks a sound track, there are funny smells in the house, and you have various bodily functions that must be taken care of, including burping, that are messy and inconvenient and unromantic.

My oldest daughter is in college, planning on becoming a psychologist. My middle daughter, a sophomore in high school, has decided that she would like to be a pediatrician. My youngest daughter is still trying to figure out what she wants to do, but has expressed some interest in veterinary medicine.

I’m happy to see that my children are developing goals for themselves, that they are recognizing the value of their educations and are focusing in directions that they see as beneficial for themselves over the long term. Soon they too will be “living happily ever after.”

Given that all our children are adopted out of not the best sort of circumstances, clearly it is primarily environment—how we have raised them, rather than genetics—which has made most of the difference for them. Thankfully, too, they are learning to recognize, finally, the opportunity they’ve gotten as a consequence of having been adopted. Their lives are turning out radically different than how they otherwise might have been.

Since we know environment matters, as a teacher, my wife tries her best to help her students each year. On occasion, she has been successful at changing the direction of a child’s life. But all too often, her best efforts seem to be for naught. Too many children have home situations where there is drug use, abuse, neglect, and a general lack of financial and parental support—where the mother has multiple children, each by a different father, while the current man about the house has no biological or legal relationship for any of the children.

Another of the biggest predictors for success in school for children is the educational level of the parents. The more schooling the parents have had, the better the children do in school. Children with two parents who love them and stay involved with them do much better in school than those who don’t. They also tend to do better throughout their lives.

So every day, my wife heads off to try to educate these children from all sorts of life situations. She likes her work, but she also gets frustrated with the attempts by administrators and politicians to micromanage the classroom. Sometimes it isn’t so much fun to be at school. It’s just a job.

My wife and I have been married more than twenty-eight years now. We were childless for ten years before we began adopting our three daughters. My wife is in the career she always dreamed of, teaching third grade. Meanwhile, my latest book came out in November, I have another being reissued on Wednesday, and my agent is busy trying to sell three more. I’ve finally become a professional writer. But morning still comes too early, and it’s a whirlwind sometimes taking children to soccer games and choir practices, doctor and dentist appointments and all the rest. But when we sit back and take a look around, we really have lived happily ever after.

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Quote for the Day

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life — much less intelligence — beyond this Earth does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime.

–Arthur C. Clarke

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Quote for the Day

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it’s written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea.

–Robert A. Heinlein

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