Disembodied grace

is no grace at all. Apart from the person and work of Jesus Christ, we have no hope. So often I find myself and others speaking about grace as is if it some ethereal goo that we cash in on. Otherwise men speak of God's graciousness while denying the historical Christ. No! Grace is the propitiation for our sins payed in Christ's death and his ongoing work through the holy spirit to keep us and make us holy. To Christ alone we look for sure hope--for ourselves, our families, the church, and the world.

Our move to the city

frightens me. Transplantation. My roots have grown deep in this place, conforming precisely around each rock, seeking out water.  Now a new place; new rocks, new soil. We might find shallow, rocky soil. Will our leaves whither; will our fruit rot?

"I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)" Honestly, though, I don't always desire the kind of provision he promises:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19,20)

He promises to give us what we need to fulfill his mission--not simply to make us happy. He asks us to sacrifice our whole lives for his glory. I can understand why outsiders might not like the idea of that. We must understand, however, that he created us with capacity for great joy, and the fulfillment of that capacity for joy coincides with the fulfillment of our purpose as his creatures; namely, seeking his glory, spreading the kingdom.

And Peter said, "See, we have left our homes and followed you."  

And he said to them, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life. (Luke 18:28-30)

I love the words "in this time". So many Christians speak as if our inheritance as believers awaits us only in heaven, but Christ said, "many times more in this time".  We may not have homes, and we may be hungry, but in Christ and in fulfilling his mission we have a joy that is worth "many times more" than these things.

Grace through marriage

The Catholics list marriage among the seven sacraments. I understand. "Husbands, love you wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25)". Don't just read over this. Go back. Read it again. It's hard to love like Christ. Each faltering attempt to love my wife in this way impresses me more deeply with the grandeur of Christ's love for his people. I love him more because of it. That's grace. Marriage works holiness--a sacrament of sorts.

Physics often transforms

me into this guy:

You've studied hard; you think you've learned something; the question shifts (ever-so-slightly) and WHAM!--you know nothing.

With the help of my physics prof, Dr. Schelp, I've struggled to answer an unasked question centered around a Griffith's Electricity and Magnetism problem. They (who?) call this research. So far, I've failed to answer the question. I have learned some physics, however, and some abstractly philosophical lessons. I share one:

Physics curricula never attempt to thoroughly connect the studied physical principles with the phenomenological world. In physics class, you study laws, theorems, etc. Then, you study the mathematics necessary to apply those laws in idealized circumstances. Well, it turns out that no small gap lies between this physics-happy-land math and the math necessary to apply physical principles in more realistic (i.e. less ideal) circumstances.

I'm OK with that. I don't need to know everything right away. In fact, this revelation of the obvious instructs my understanding of physics (philosophically). Physics doesn't exist primarily as a tool for describing individual phenomenon (indeed, physics does this), but as a framework upon which to build an understanding of the material universe.

I like that. Pictures of the universe interest me more than the non-uniform distribution of surface-bound charge in a dielectric cupcake.

Writing Process

I found this note at Yeah Yeah OK Read Petty. It well describes my writing process. Excuse the French.

Book Review: Joseph Conrad's Nostromo

Obscure verbiage and enigmatic syntax cover the world of Conrad's Nostromo like a thick, bristly undergrowth. This speaks about myself and our times, not Conrad; so, I thwacked away at the undergrowth, carving a makeshift path from start to finish. I understood some part of what was there. I present to you a portion of that some part (You're getting very little, all in all. Go read the book).

The story takes place in Sulaco--a coastal town in the fictional South American country of Costaguana. As usual, Conrad paints his setting with beauty, all the while molding the tone of the story. Here's a little taste from part 1, chapter 1:

Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous rocks sprinkle with tiny black dots the smooth dome of snow. Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf the shadow of the mountains, the clouds begin to roll out of the lower valleys. They swathe in sombre tatters the naked crags of precipices above the wooded slopes, hide the peaks, smoke in stormy trails across the snows of Higuerota. The Cordillera is gone from you as if it had dissolved itself into great piles of grey and black vapours that travel out slowly to seaward and vanish into thin air all along the front before the blazing heat of the day.

This rich, vibrant texture continues throughout the novel, making Nostromo a slow, but beautiful read.

Conrad also wrote astounding vibrancy into the characters of Nostromo, more so, in fact, than any other Conrad work I've read. The thematic force of "Nostromo" rests upon these diverse personalities, and, as usual, Conrad skillfully injects them with life and complexity, reflecting his profound psychological and philosophical insights. Another taste, this time about Dr. Monygham:

The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, 'Decoud! Decoud!' He hobbled about the room with slight, angry laughs. Many years ago both his ankles had been seriously damaged in the course of a certain investigation conducted in the castle of Sta Marta by a commission composed of military men. Their nomination had been signified to them unexpectedly at the dead of night, with scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a tempestuous voice, by Guzman Bento. The old tyrant, maddened by one of his sudden accesses of suspicion, mingled spluttering appeals to their fidelity with imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and casements of the castle on the hill had been already filled with prisoners. The commission was charged now with the task of discovering the iniquitous conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour of his country.

The story often delivers through the expounded opinions of the main characters, frequently dipping into their individual histories for context. The effect: profound believability. I marvel at the novelist's art in crafting this array of personalities, complete with histories!

The world of Nostromo, depicted and populated as above, sums to the single word "corrupt". No single character escapes the reach of this corruption, no single personality triumphs over it. The most moral character lives in abject loneliness. The sentimentalist commits suicide when faced with impossibility. The materialist is hopelessly enslaved to his wealth. Even the cynic (with whom you might expect Conrad to sympathize) lives a miserable existence, hated and fearful. The "incorruptible Capitaz de Cargadores", Nostromo, the title's namesake,and, for many pages, the only hope for a happy ending, corrupts and becomes enslaved to materialism and grotesque love, a slavery ransomed by death.

Each of these characters holds a different worldview, and each worldview ultimately leads to despair. Thus, this novel casts a skeptical eye on the notion of truth, a skepticism that, I believe, arises in the faults of Conrad's own modernist worldview. In Conrad's view, an understanding of life begins with particular facts about the world. From these facts and guided by rationality the modernist builds a comprehensive look at everything that is. Conrad saw the impossibility of this endeavor. You can't create value systems, bases for good and evil, from particular facts. Conrad needed something greater than the particular facts to give meaning to them. Unfortunately, his modernist presuppositions excluded the possibility of a relevant God.

The Sacrifice of Language: Evaluation and Challenge

I said that my next post would be "The Sacrifice of Language: Implications of Deconstruction". In trying to squeeze this one out, I discovered mentions of implication in all my previous posts on the topic! So, I'll skip ahead to a brief evaluation and challenge of this philosophical/linguistic system.

I see deconstruction coming about (vaguely) like this: the caustic rational principle, homo mensura (man as measure), begins to dissolve the credibility of ideas that challenge it. Religion then becomes relegated to the realm of mysticism (at best), increasingly divorced from the sphere of intellectual life. Without the dogmas of religion breathing life into the organization of particulars, previously objective categories like morality and social ethics break down into individually and culturally relative entities.

Philosophers then noticed (appropriately, I think) that language finds its meaning in connection to complex structures and that these structures vary from culture to culture and individual to individual. The lobotomy of the spiritual from the intellectual blinded men to the possibility of some nature-external reason guiding the mechanisms of language. Without this reason to give credence to language faculties and language itself, why should we accept the possibility of real communication? How can we believe that our speaking meets any common terms in the listener? The listener may answer our sounds or letters with, "I understand." But how do we know that by "I understand" they mean what we think they mean?

Nobody takes the system this far, so here begins my critique:

1. In some limited sense, deconstruction must be true. Certainly, our individual experiences shape our perceptions.
2. Limitless deconstruction hinges upon the belief that no naturally or historically relevant God exists. By limitless deconstruction I mean the application of deconstruction to the exclusion of real communication. A theological explanation for the existence of language easily undermines limitless deconstruction.
   
3. Limitless deconstruction fundamentally deconstructs itself, thereby revealing a false premise. It would be impossible to assert the objective validity of limitless deconstruction (more directly the know-ability of limitless deconstruction), because limitless deconstruction excludes the possibility of (accessing) objective validity. The three primary premises (of which one, two, or all are false) are 1. Linguistic frameworks vary from culture to culture, individual to individual. 2. Linguistic frameworks determine the outcome of communicative effort. 3. No extra-natural reason guides linguistic mechanisms. Of these three, which should we toss? I can hardly argue with 1. and 2.

***

I call these posts "The Sacrifice of Language", because writing exhausts me. To write, I must believe the effort worthwhile. I could not write if I believed Derrida. That said, I would still like to argue a positive reason for the effort. I have ideas about this--slow and coming. But here ends, for a while, "The Sacrifice of Language" posts.