Lesson 2: Don’t be a heretic in the truth!

In my John Milton class, we read Milton’s Areopagitica, which apparently served as a crucial inspiration for our first amendment right of freedom of the press.

Milton was a prolific English writer who lived through the 17^th century English Civil War.  Milton was a puritan, and puritans tended to butt heads with the Church of England concerning just about everything.  But, the Church of England was closely wedded to the Crown and the English government, making the puritans not simply religious dissidents, but political dissidents as well.  So, many of the puritans writings were closely scrutinized by the government before they could be published and were often censored.

And so Milton penned the Areopagitica in which he calls for a free press and an end to censorship.  He crafts a brilliant argument:

He argues that nothing should be censored and that every written piece should be allowed to stand on its own.  If a given piece contains fallacious reasoning or weak arguments, then any rational person would be able to recognize such fallacies and reject the argument accordingly.  He argues that if everything were freely published, than the truth would win out as rational people read and evaluate opposing arguments and writings.  Milton challenges the established authority.  He argues that if their positions and arguments are valid and true and his are invalid and false, then why should he not be able to publish his writings and show all of England how foolish and wrong he and his fellow puritans are.

During the revolution, the crown was overthrown, Cromwell ascended to the Protectorate, and Milton held a prominent office in the new government.  Sadly, Cromwell’s government, now the oppressor and not the oppressed, gladly censored the opposition.  Darn it Milton!  You hypocrite!

But Milton’s moral failings aside, the logic undergirding the Areopagitica still obtains.  If we are really serious about knowing and believing the truth, then we have to take Milton’s pre-hypocrisy epistemological rigor seriously.  We have to be willing to read any argument or viewpoint and let reason speak for itself.

Clearly, it’s bad to believe the wrong things for the wrong reasons, but equally unjustified according to Milton, is believing the right things for the wrong reasons.  Milton uses the example of a parishioner who adopts the attitude of “If the preacher says it, then I believe it, and that settles it.”  He argues that even if what this parishioner believes is indeed the truth, he believes it for the wrong reasons.  He hasn’t carefully considered the issue and weighed opposing arguments and evidence.  He simply is spoon fed one line of thought and as for anything that conflicts with this line of thought, he plugs his ears and says, “LA, LA, LA, NOT LISTENING! NOT LISTENING.”  In short, he is a heretic in the truth.

This sounds ridiculous, but people do this all the time.  Perhaps they merely parrot what one church’s denominational doctrine says and disregard opposing viewpoints because this one denomination or tradition, they believe, somehow succeeded in correctly understanding all of the Bible’s passages.  Perhaps they only get their news from one cable network because they figure that all the rest are biased and unreliable.  Perhaps they perfectly align themselves with their political party of choice policy-for-policy because this party is always right (or at least, always more right than the other party).

Are things true because we believe them, or do we believe things because we think they are true?  If what’s true is true irrespective of our beliefs, then we should have no qualms about reading and considering fair arguments that cast the opposing view in the best light possible.  No cable network should be off limits whether it is MSNBC or Fox News.  No book should be off limits whether it is God Delusion or the Bible.

Figuring out what is true isn’t supposed to be easy.  If it does seem easy, then there is a good chance that what we believe to be true, isn’t.  And if we did get lucky and believe the right thing by happenstance without the necessary intellectual rigor, then we’re still just heretics in the truth.

Lesson 1: Shooting the Albatross is a Good Thing

One of the more twistedly beautiful poems I read in college was “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  In the poem, a strange, old man stops an arriving wedding guest outside a church to tell him an enigmatic tale from his seafaring days.  The wedding guest doesn’t have time for a lengthy and random story, but is rendered powerless to resist the old man’s aura and oratorical cadence.

And it’s a tale indeed.  After winding up in some less-than-desirable circumstances out at sea, the mariner and his fellow sailors are visited by an albatross.  This seemingly innocent creature has little else of an agenda other than to offer company to the crew and to play about.  And yet, in an act of inexplicable cruelty, the mariner shoots the albatross with his crossbow.

What ensues is a bizarre series of ill-fortuned, illusory events that terrify the mariner beyond imagination: he finds himself floating upon a rotting, burning sea parched and starving with slimy creatures all around, haunting spirits like “Nightmare Life-In-Death,” phantoms, and a crew that dies and rises again as zombie creatures.  For part of his penance, the mariner must wear the dead body of the albatross around his neck as a reminder of the needless evil and woe that he has wrought.

After an ageless stretch of time, the mariner finally gains insight into both his deeds and his own self.  He survives these tormenting terrors and lives out his days a sadder but wiser man.

At some point that overly simplistic, childlike manner of literary interpretation kicks in and we find ourselves asking that cliché question, “What’s the moral of the story?”

Many would say, “Don’t shoot innocent albatrosses,” or perhaps, “Learn from others’ mistakes.”  After hearing out the mariner’s gruesome tale, how could one possibly think that it would be a GOOD idea to shoot the albatross?

And yet it is clear that the mariner’s harrowing life transformation would not have been possible had he not shot the bird.  Some lessons in life—deeply significant and personal lessons—just can’t be learned by heeding instruction, but rather must be learned through experience.  Some truths about life just can’t be truly understood unless you shoot the albatross.

Which reminds me of a shameful moment several years ago when I unwittingly shot the albatross of my pride to smithereens.  After an ageless stretch of time waiting at a walk-in clinic to receive an allergy shot, the nurses notified me that my serum was not in the refrigerator.  Through my mind began to race all the inconvenience and frustration that would result from this act of carelessness.  I demanded that they look again.  After another failed attempt, they suggested that I go home and look in my home refrigerator.  I was rude and short with them; I told them I would, but that it wouldn’t be there.  I knew it wasn’t in my home refrigerator.  And so I drove home just waiting to be vindicated, marched up the steps, through the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and just as I expected…MY ALLERGY SIRUM?!?  NO!  It couldn’t be!

And there hung that dead albatross around my neck.  As I drove back to the clinic with an apology note, my serum and a half-baked idea of what I was going to say, feeling like I should be wearing a paper bag over my head, I remember smiling and thanking God that he had blown up my pride, at least for the moment.  I thought I already understood such concepts as humility, patience, personal fallibility, etc.  But some things in life simply can’t be learned or understood apart from experience.  Often in life you learn humility by first being prideful, patience through impatience, personal fallibility by making stupid choices.  I can only be thankful that the nurses were more gracious to me than I had been to them, especially considering that they were about to stick a needle in my body.

This is one of my albatross stories.  If in some way my story is instructive to others like the mariner’s possibly was, then great.  But I think that far more likely our stories are a beautiful reminder that, for our own personal development, it just may be good to shoot the albatross from time to time.

Five Lessons From My College Education

Later this month, I will mark one of life’s big mile stones: college graduation.  (Actually I’m only pretending to graduate.  I still have one class to go this Summer, and I wasn’t actually enrolled during this year’s fall and spring semesters due to collegiate athletics and career ending injuries and unexpected turns and twists, so it’s a little anticlimactic—but it is a symbolic victory with the real victory assured to come in August.)

As I reflect on the last five years of my life and how much I have changed and grown into the man that I am, in some ways it is hard to remember who I was in high school.  I suppose only the people whom I haven’t seen since high school could comment on whether I’m the same Jay Bilsborrow or a different Jay Bilsborrow, or perhaps a nuanced Jay Bilsborrow.

While at William and Mary, I was (still am?) a good ol’ fashioned liberal arts humanities major, which means other than being a better reader and writer, I am not coming away with any practical skills or knowledge (good thing I’m going to law school! Ha!).

So other than some interesting information about John Milton and the Crusades and Symbolic Logic, what did I learn from college?  While by no means an exhaustive list, I have identified the 5 Lessons I Learned in College (4 from my studies and 1 from athletics).  During May, I am going to blog on each lesson throughout the month.  Stay tuned.

Ringing the Bell

For most students, yesterday was the last day of classes here at William and Mary.  The last day is known as “Blow Out,” which probably has something to do with the fact that thousands of students blow their brains out with drunken revelry from sun-up to well into the wee hours of the night—people dancing around in the Sunken Gardens, mobs roaming to and fro.  This is about as close as W&M gets to what party schools consider normal.  I’ve never totally understood the liberation that such students feel; big kahuna final exams are always right around the corner, and so the school year is FAR from over.

For seniors, the last day of classes is extra special though; it isn’t just the close of the school year, but the close of an important part of one’s life.  All the class, all the homework, the papers, the late nights, the tests, the grades, and on this day, you can finally smell the end: a mix of pollen, pancakes, and whatever lies just up ahead and around the bend.

For decades, centuries perhaps, seniors have entered the historic Wren Building to ring the Wren bell, one by one.  It’s a way to announce to the world, “I’m about to graduate! HARK UPON THE GALE!”

There are many traditions in which I don’t take part, and the end of my undergrad experience has been a little disjointed with not having been in school this past fall or spring, working at Colonial Williamsburg, and still needing to finish one class this June.  But having my chance to ring the Wren Bell was of symbolic importance and something that my soul needed.

So during my lunch break at work, I headed over to campus.  Dressed in a shirt and tie in contrast to all the frolicking casually-dressed students, already between two chapters of my life.  A sense of eager anticipation, almost a touch of nervousness.  The weather can’t be more perfect, a slight breeze, the sun beaming into the Wren court yard as I stride up to the steps.  Amid the happy din of laughter and glee, the steady tolling keeps resounding.  I’m not sure if it is coming from the Wren or my chest.  A brief stop on the porch and then up the stairs, up, up, up.

And there is the rope…my turn.  Here it is.  What am I supposed to think right now?  What’s supposed to be streaming through my mind?  Sometimes in life you have those momentous occasions that you anticipate and think about, and then you are there, right in the midst of it, and it’s all happening so quickly.

Someone suggests that I give it a pull.  Okay.  Grab the rope.  Pull hard.  And there is my knell echoing across campus.  That’s it?

My heart is sated.  I can go back to work.  I can leave this chapter of my life and enter the next.

Lord of the Kings

Among my favorite cinematic productions is The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  While no film is a perfect translation of its respective novel, the LOTR movies come pretty close: so much epic grandeur and depth and sublimity.  In the end, after the evil Sauron has been vanquished, the gritty Aragorn mantles himself in an air of stateliness as he accepts his crown.  Eons have passed, but the kingship has finally been restored to Gondor, the shriveled white tree finally blooms again, and ivory-colored petals fill the air as at the grandest of celebrations.  The king has returned!

One can’t help but notice that LOTR is dripping with Biblical parallels.  After centuries without a king, Jesus appears as David’s heir, through sacrifice he conquers death, then later he is arrayed in splendor in His heavenly form as depicted in Revelation.  I could go on and on with examples.

Which makes me wonder, why hasn’t anyone made a Jesus film with the same epic grandeur, depth, and sublimity that LOTR has?  Many of the Jesus films out there just seem to me to be a bit on the folksy and lame side.  The Passion of the Christ captures a lot of gravity and grittiness, but many Jesus films, while depicting Jesus’ humanity quite well, just don’t quite capture the essence of His divinity.  I want to see Jesus the warrior-king riding forth upon His steed with his fiery eyes, crowned with many diadems, white robed, bronze-footed, His face like the sun shining in its strength.

I’ve been reading the Letter to the Hebrews recently.  At the outset, the author says, “He [Jesus] is the radiance of His [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His [God’s] nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.”  So God-rays emanate from Jesus Himself.  Wow!  Then near the end of the Hebrews letter, the writer announces that “at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”  The “consummation,” or as some translate it, the “culmination” of the ages.  The climax of climaxes.  This is pretty epic!

So here is call-out for a Jesus film with the cinematics of The Lord of the Rings!

(A blockbuster King David film would be pretty rockin’ awesome too!)

Luna

Here I sit next to my dining room window late at night.  The moon in all its fullness is beaming down.  I often think about how this is the same moon, or those stars the same stars, that the Caesars saw when they looked up at night.  Kings and popes, Newton, Nietzsche, Columbus, The Queen of Sheba, the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and the Persians too, Harriet Tubman on all those nights of leading slaves north, monks gazing out the windows of their monastery walls, the Pharaohs, the laborers who built the pyramids for the pharaohs, the laborers who always seem to be building something on William and Mary’s campus, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, all those heart-broken people in Japan and Libya and all the other devastated places in the world that we’ve temporarily forgotten about because they aren’t prominently featured in the news right now, the President, the Laundromat guy, and the man from the warehouse, and me—we’ve all seen that silver medallion with its familiar somber expression, a sadness and yet a peace.  Under this same moon, some will cry out in agony tonight while others gently sleep.

As different as we all are on this Earth—tomorrow will have its share of strivings and strain, budget battles, tests, performances, competitions, wars, lifting of weights at the gym, trades, and discussions—we all share in the same moon, and we have for eons. 

Shine

I’ve always enjoyed the vibrancy of the David Crowder Band’s music and the creativity of its music videos, but this one knocks it out of the park (click to follow link).  Beautiful!

Wisdom in Laundromats

I typically don’t think of laundromats as places where I might gain a richer and deeper perspective on life.

The other night I was doing laundry.  Except for the janitors performing their nightly ritual, the place was empty.  One of the particularly outgoing janitors decided to strike up a conversation—“conversation” isn’t quite the right word, “monologue” is probably more accurate.  Having my face buried in a book must not have been much of a deterrent for Mr. P. who helped himself to my attention taking the opportunity to tell me all sorts of random life stories.

This kind of thing can be annoying; no matter how many times you say, “uh-huh,” the stream of consciousness just keeps flowing like the Amazon.

But as I stopped simply hearing and started actually listening, “uh-huh’s” gave way to questions and disinterest morphed into fascination (though listening was a challenge—after cutting through his un-annunciated speech, I probably only understood between 60% and 70% of what he said).

He elaborated on Williamsburg’s past, on some of the darker aspects of the city’s social dynamics, and he reflected on some of the decisions that he had made during the course of his life, some good, some bad, some serious, and some hilarious.  I realized that even inarticulate laundromat janitors have a corner on wisdom, if you have the patience and the willingness to hear them out.

Apparently the balcony of one of the apartment buildings near where I live recently collapsed.  Mr. P. told me that he had warned management about a growing fissure in the concrete for over a year.  He warned them that the balcony would eventually collapse, and that it needed to be repaired, or at least roped off so that no one would be hurt or killed.  Even though he had been in the concrete business for much of his life, his warnings fell on deaf ears.  Who would believe a lowly janitor who could barely pronounce his words?  No one was harmed by the collapse, but people could have been seriously injured, or worse, all because of the reckless negligence of someone who “knew better.”

As an attorney, someday I’ll be in a loftier position as one of the higher-ups.  I’ll have my liberal arts education with my Juris Doctorate, and I’ll probably have less educated, simpler folk working beneath me.  And ultimately I hope that I’ll be the kind of person who listens to the laundromat guy.

Stuffed Animals and Law

This year I have been working in the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center book store where I assist customers in purchasing edification.  Because of scheduling needs, there are some days that I work in the gift shop instead. 

The gift shop has all sorts of trinkets and whirligigs and knick-knacks, ceramic dishes, ornaments, smelly soaps and the like.  I much prefer to sell customers sources of edification and knowledge in the bookstore than I do to sell customers dishes and smelly soaps in the gift shop.

I can’t help but wonder if these purchases are really necessary, that maybe this money could be used to educate some child in an inner-city community or feed a hungry mouth in a third-world country.  Though, I do recognize that if it were not for the dishes and smelly soaps, there wouldn’t be a Colonial Williamsburg and many more people would be unemployed (maybe myself?) and people wouldn’t be able to enjoy this rich national historic treasure.  So smelly soaps it is, I guess.

Part of working in the gift shop entails making sure the sale floor is stocked and orderly (the more obsessive compulsive, the better!).  And among the first things I do is to make sure that my fuzzy little stuffed animal friends are looking good—friends like Sally the Sheep and Prince the Dog, which is creepily modeled off of a dead dog carcass from the early 1900’s.

This all harkens back to my childhood.  My bedroom was filled with furry friends.  In fact, there was a time that there was barely enough room in my bed for me!

Every child dreams about what he wants to do for a career when he grows up.  Somewhere between physicist and pharmacist, I wanted to be a stuffed animal maker and have my own stuffed animal shop.

I ultimately decided on Law, but it was a close choice.

Our Great Curse and Our Greater Blessing

Lifted and edited from a discussion thread on Facebook.  Alexander, a non-believer, had some genuinely honest yet tough questions of the God in which Christians believe.  As best as I could, I tried to give him some genuinely honest answers.

Alexander,

I appreciate your honesty.  I appreciate that you ask tough questions, big questions, important questions.  There are many of my fellow Christians who I wish would do the same.  I hope you will join me as I muse over some of the points you made.  They are very interesting.

The notion of original sin is deeply thought provoking.  Is a newborn baby guilty of some immoral act?  Is such a baby somehow deserving of a metaphysical death sentence?  Such notions seem to clash against our sense of innate justice and fairness.  I think you are right in that observation.  But I think that original sin is far deeper than an intrinsic status of moral guilt.  Original sin is the accursed state, the state of brokenness, into which we are all born.  We live in a broken world--few would deny that, one of pain, and suffering, and death.  No baby is evil, but every baby enters a world weighted down by an evil burden, this curse.

But why this curse?  You point out that it is hard to believe that everyone is born in the image of God, even the mass murderers, pedophiles, psychopaths, dictators, and rapists.  If we were not made in the image of God, then the curse of our world wouldn't seem that alarming or disturbing.  But since we are made in the image of God, that's what makes this curse seem so striking, so unfair.  What did we do to deserve this?  This curse seems to be connected with our being made in God's image, and yet being separated from our creator.

At this point many Christians would point out that God gave Man a free choice, and choosing to sin is what Man did with it and that it's ultimately Man's fault, but God is going to save us anyway.  You probably find this explanation to be a bit of a cop-out and rather disingenuous.  In fact, you say that this "exonerates God for any responsibility..."  You probably find this explanation unsatisfying and hard to believe.

And I agree with you.  And I am a Jesus following, God believing, Christian.  

In the Garden of Eden story, yes Adam and Eve choose to eat the fruit and accept the serpent's suggestion, but God is the one who puts the forbidden tree smack dab in the middle of the garden, kind of like a mother who puts the cookie jar right in front of the child and tells the child not to eat.  Even if we assume that God HAD to put the tree in the garden in order for Adam and Eve to genuinely have free will, did God have to allow the serpent (Satan) into the garden to tempt them?  Surely an omniscient and omnipotent God could have foreseen and prevented this.  Even if the tree's presence is needed for Man to genuinely have free will, to give him an opportunity to obey or disobey, Satan's presence is not.  Allowing the serpent in the garden is a needless provocation.  And God knows that Man is but dust, he knows his frame, and his predispositions.  It certainly seems that God is setting Man up to fall.

I believe in an omnipotent and omniscient God, which means that this God knew of the horrible curse that his frail, dust-like creatures would fall into, and God had the power to prevent it.  He did not.  And the ultimate question...is why?  Can this God possibly be good?

I see the history of our world—of us—as a giant narrative arc.  And the theme that stands out to me is the theme of redemption, but more than that, the theme of love.  Without the curse, there is no need for redemption.  Without the need for redemption, there is no Jesus coming into the world to die for us.  And that makes the curse of original sin a necessary and integral part of the grand story.  God Incarnate enters into this curse as a newborn baby, suffers because of this curse , and dies on a Roman cross as a result of this curse.  Without this, we don't see how much God actually loves us. 

Some Christians think of Jesus as God's plan B-- God creates this good world, Man sins, God says "darn it!  wait...I know...I'll send Jesus to die and that will undo what Man did."  I don't see Jesus as Plan B; I see Jesus as Plan A, from the foundation of the world, from the beginning of time, because God planned for that to be how He would show is love for us. 

Jesus.  Love-in-the-Flesh.  Most gods in the world's religions expect their devotees to cower before them groveling.  They expect sacrifices.  They judge you based on how good or bad you are.  But this God washes the dirty feet of those whom he created.  This God sends his own son as the sacrifice.  This God, in the ultimate act of humility dies for us.  He says of the curse, "It is finished, paid in full."

That is the God for me.  That is the God I love.